Based on another thread, I was asked to repost an interesting croudsource of information on the coffee we buy:
Make your replies fit the following format;
- Location: at least your country, not the beans.
- Retailer: Were did you buy your beans?online, brick and mortar. Be specific.
- Beans: If a blend, name the brand and type. If single origin, give the detes, i.e. country of origin, region, farm, processing method, elevation
- Roast: Light, medium, dark, french …
- Advertized tasting notes: e.g. stone fruit, sweet, balanced acidity.
- Your tasting notes: Do you agree with the advertized cupping notes? Why?
- Price per unit: e.g. $/lb or £/kg etc…
With any luck we might discover hidden gems, or discover a new favourite or maybe a bargain.
Location: Canada
Retailer: BeansUnited (web)
Beans: Yirgacheffe Aricha, Ethiopia, Green Beans, Naturally Processed, Gr.1
Roast: home roasted to very light (mid first crack)
Retailer Tasting notes: blueberry, stone fruits, jasmine florals, smooth body with brown sugar finish.
My tasting notes: stonefruits yes, I want to say peach, jasmine yes too. Blueberry, sadly barely a hint. I won’t call it a lie, but putting it first is overselling it. Should be last on the list, in a smaller font. Brown sugar finish, even with a light roast to bring fruit forwward and less sweetness, I’ll still say yes. Cost: $198.50 CAD for 15lbs= $13.23/lbs
7.5/10. A realiably good cup of coffee, but not the greatness I seek.
Hey, I’m a bit late to the party but still interested since coffee means so many different things to different people.
Do you think home coffee roasting is something a 3rd wave coffee snob can enjoy? I’m currently spending a ton of money (usually between 15€ to 20€ per 250g) on specialty coffee and the bags don’t exactly last long.
On paper, getting high quality raw beans and roasting them at home would be much cheaper, even with the extra cost of buying a home roaster and some extra electricity. But does it match what a specialty roaster can produce with extensive knowledge, experience and industrial grade equipment?
In short, yes. My roaster has paid for itself and my beans are cheaper. I’m probably not saving money, but I get better always fresh coffee for my dollar. I also buy in bulk when the price rewards doing so.
Better compared to high-quality specialty coffee?
Not trying to be anal here, I just found that coffee preferences are very individual, from instant to starbucks and nespresso - there will always be someone who likes it.
To give you some context, I have a nice espresso setup at home (Zuriga E2-S and a Varia VS6) and am into mostly medium roasts, with a bit of chocolate and ideally some extra notes on top. I come from a V60 but imo espresso doesn’t really lend itself to the tea-like florals in the same way - somehow light roast espresso always felt too sour to my taste buds.
Do you think I could cover my espresso needs with home roasting? I’d hate to invest 200€ into a roaster to only realize every cup is even slightly worse than the pre-roasted coffee was.
Again, yes. Roasting is simple and easy. A fluid bed (Air roaster) gives perfect results with little effort. What matters here is the roast level, to your tastes, which is easy by sight and sound with very little practice. The other key factor is fresh roasted coffee. About 3 days after roasting is peak, then a slow, gradual decline as the coffee ages. If you roast yourself, you can keep yourself perpetually drinking perpetually fresh roasted coffee.
What roasting won’t help you with is getting great beans to start with. Fresh roasted won’t fix starting with bad or mediocre beans. If the beans you buy are the ones you love, you’ll have perfect coffee every time.
Just know that getting great green beans is not always easy because an area that made your holy grail of coffee last year, might make a lesser coffee this season. Bean retailers, wholesalers, and specialty channels have inventories that vary throughout the year. The one advantage of buying green and roasting youself, is that green beans don’t really age within a year, not like roasted coffee does. So if you find your perfect bean, buy up to a years worth and get a discount, and enjoy fresh roasted perfection all year round.
My problem with buying roasted is the lack of information. They are often blends or simply house branded so I have no way of knowing what I’m getting.
Having moved to green bean buying, I have a very good grasp the patterns of flavour variation form different origin beans. I know what I like, and what I don’t because the information of single origin green beans is very clear and free from branding. The cupping notes are professionally done and while imperfect, more consistently reliable than any roaster’s.
You get more precision, clarity and control. If blending is something you want to try, you are in the perfect place to do so if you roast your own. I do not blend myself, because I enjoy the variations of regions and even the variations of year to year.
As to your v60 vs espresso, I think we’re aligned. I prefer my pour over light to very light, because I’m chasing those notes that come from great terroir. The real joy of single origin. I want blueberry, cherry, peach and jasmine and only lighter roast reveal them.
My espresso tastes are mostly similar to yours, I prefer medium because I want more cocoa, caramel and sweetness with balanced acidity. Espresso intensity will overwhelm most of the light roast notes, so you lose nothing here but gain from the next layer of flavours.
While I do enjoy dark roasts for espresso, I save them for cheap comoddity beans because if you roast any coffee dark enough, they all start to taste the same.
Is roasting for you? Maybe. It definitely won’t make anything worse. But understand the nature of what it gives you and what it doesn’t.
Great roasting is easy but won’t fix bad beans. Great roasting will let you enjoy peak freshness as often as you like – my coffee is never older than 2 weeks roasted and because I like the ethereal notes of light roast ethiopian beans, I can bring out their very best, exactly to my tastes.
You have more control – I can roast a little lighter than light, and often do, when a particular bean tells me it benefits from it. Right now, my current main stash of beans rewards me when I stop earlier in the first crack. Its lighter than light and while I still get the stonefruit, I get more jasmine and blueberry this way. For my espresso, I’ll do the same bean to medium, and lose most jasmine and blueberry, but the stonefruit persists and comes out peachier and coco nibs, caramel and general sweetness come out and the acidity of a light roast balamces out well with a heavy extraction espresso. I have full control within the limitations of my beans.
Make sense?
Thank you very much for the detailed writeup, that makes things very clear. We are indeed very aligned - even down to our preference for Ethiopian.
That leaves me with 2 jobs I guess - finding out what kind of green beans are available here in Germany and probably more importantly, if I want take on another little side-hobby next to my coffee hobby 😉
15 pounds?
Yes. The bag is like holding a big baby. Depending on how much I drink, it lasts 3-6 months. Hence the green beans. I roast as needed and the best prices are usually for bigger orders. I keep a few bags of other things if I want to mix it up, but I’m pretty good at dialing my purchases to my tastes. I know what I do and don’t like, so the big bags make sense for me personally.
What sort of home roasting equipment do you use?
Hot air. FreshRoast SR540.