News
Coffee Lab, Waterbury Vermont
Last month, I jumped at the opportunity to spend a week at Coffee Lab International on a 5 day roasting course. It was great to finally get some experience on a variety of commercial and sample roasters as well as a chance to use all the equipment in the “Lab” which is not only for namesake. Besides running courses and roasting primarily for they local Vermont market, they are using their very well set-up lab to grade green samples for outside brokers, roasters, importers, etc … anyone who is really interested in knowing the real quality of their green.
For me, this course was all about filling the missing link. It’s very common for people like myself to get their start in this industry as a barista. Often times, the next step involves training, working for a roaster or perhaps starting your own café. However, unless you become the designated roaster, you get little to no experience learning the art. We get to spend countless hours training, tweaking machines, pulling shots, adjusting grinders, changing burrs, experimenting with different brews, working with freshly roasted specialty coffees, travelling to origin, cupping, barista competitions, perfecting the final cup … BUT … never get near the roaster, it seems crazy. It was certainly time that I filled this gap in my experience and I feel so much more connected to the end result because of it.
We spent the week grading green samples, creating different roast profiles for them and cupping the final results. We were grading the coffee based on defects as well moisture and density levels. By doing this process first we began to get more of understanding of how the bean itself would react to the heat in the roaster and also what to expect as a result. In the beginning it really is all about trial and error with the idea obviously being to bring out the best qualities of the bean, which is easier said that done.
We also got a chance to use to Agtron machine after roast to detect the color on the outside as well as the inside of the bean. The color results are displayed as a number and I am sure there are many theories out there as to what is the perfect spread, by that I mean the difference between the inside and the outside of the bean. In our little bit of experience we found most of the roast’s with less that a five point spread began to taste flat and those with 5 or more showed more complexity and nuance. We did have some surprises, where roast’s that we thought looked terrible ended up tasting great, namely a Kenyan Peaberry that got dubbed “pooberry” by it’s really scary resemblance to mouse droppings.
We simply got to play around with roasting, for me, that was the best way to learn. All together we had a choice of 7 roasters, 2 Renegades, Probat, Dietrich, sample roasters, “silver bullet” (reminded me of what I saw in Bali) etc .. and an unlimited supply of green coffee as well as a wealth of knowledge in Manee Alves ready to answer any of our questions. Manee travels an impressive once a month to different origins to source all his coffee directly.
I honestly gained so much from this course and I cannot wait to get back for a week of cupping.
Jen
blog comments powered by Disqus