Roasting and Retail: Diving into the Food Craft Institute

Discuss roast levels and profiles for espresso, equipment for roasting coffee.
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TomC
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#1: Post by TomC »

So, as odd chance would have it, I stumbled on a link on Sprudge or somewhere about a month back about the Food Craft Institute and their upcoming Roasting and Retail Class. They are a non-profit organization located in Oakland in the famous Jack London Square, right smack dab in the middle of a large growing "foodie" movement region. After sharing the class information here, I actually started to consider it myself, since I have a relatively flexible schedule. And after considering it, I applied and giving my background in coffee, was accepted. So here we are.



This will serve as an ongoing commentary from me as I go thru the 12 week class. The first class was held Saturday with brief introductions and overview, then we were off to Blue Bottle Coffee, which has their roastery quite conveniently located about 50 paces from the front door of the class. We spent 5 hours there doing a tour and a roasting demo and had open season on asking both James and his Head Roaster, Jen Apodaca any questions we had. There'll be more hands on roasting stuff to come later. They closed the day with a long, casual cupping that lacked the pompousness of most cupping events. I rather enjoyed it.

I won't clog up this thread with all the shots I took or all the basic concepts, dialogues etc all at once, but rather add to it as I see something of value and let folks get a peek of what I'm doing. My challenge is the program is not all about roasting, and I want to keep the focus here on roasting, so I have to pick and choose so not to bore those of you looking for only roasting dialogue.

As stated, the class isn't just focused on roasting (although I wouldn't mind if it was), it's a mixture of business planning, cafe management, sourcing, some minor league bean grading concepts, etc. There's only 10 people in the class. I'm the only one with any significant roasting experience, so I pretty much had Jen and James to myself when it came to mining them for roasting pointers. For the first part of the tour we saw the whole workings of the company, toured the roasting room, saw how they stored and managed inventory, etc.

The beginning of the class, after introductions and an outline of the course we had a presentation from a previous graduate of the same class from last year, who gave a powerpoint lecture on what she's done with her new company, the challenges she faces, etc. It was a pretty casual environment to ask questions and dialogue with each other. Looking at the larger perspective, this is quite a unique geographic area to be expanding into the coffee/retail world, and there's quite a lot of resources and individuals with like minded goals all networking in some fashion. This young lady shown below started her own company eight months ago setting up corporate accounts for 3rd wave coffee delivery and service at bay area businesses.



The background of the class is an interesting makeup. Everyone there had/has a career that they were drudging thru and looking to escape into owning/operating a cafe and or sourcing and roasting coffee. A lot of them were successful business people who saw the burgeoning fine coffee market and had saved money for years in order to seed a small coffee related business. Many had vague coffee experience, all had the same level of coffee geekerie and passion that we share. A lot of tech industry folks, most everyone young, not a surprise for the bay area, and many had a lot of experience with start-ups in this area. One guy works for the bay area air quality resource board, which is kinda nice, since he can help others navigate the ins and outs of the legal issues required when it comes to installing a gas drum roaster in a commercial environment (hint: the bay area has some of the strictest regulations in the nation). There was one guy who is a current barista, but is so shy, he barely spoke. But for the most part, the group seems like a very interesting make up of individuals and I wouldn't be surprised if you could get a small business off the ground that might actually survive more than a year between them all.

On to some of the good stuff.. And the better content will arise as I go thru the program.

The man of the hour, James Freeman. James gave a history of the company, a very thorough tour, background of the coffee roasting industry both present and past as well as fielded any and all questions. I'll describe more about him and roasting at the tail end of this post, since I think it deserves less cluttered issues surrounding it. I found him quite fascinating and had the chance to meet him for the first time just 2 weeks prior when he hosted Aida Batlle when she expo'd her new coffees;of which I wrote about previously.



We didn't have to sign any non-disclosure agreements or anything, so I'm not divulging anything that couldn't be acquired from just reading James's book and taking a roasting lesson from him and Jen (but the later is something that doesn't normally happen, so that's where I get a bit lucky). If you're interested in the roasting concepts, bear in mind, I didn't take an audio recording with me, so I'll likely be sharing and editing to add things that came up as I recall them and include them right here in this post at the bottom in one place, since as I move along with other roasters (Highwire, Verve, etc) I'll be focusing on what I take away from them separately. Nothing earth shattering, but very well organized concepts that will actually greatly benefit any roaster looking to get their skill set honed for roasting on a gas drum. Many key points may (should) actually help steer and challenge my own concepts about roasting that I'll be applying. And I'll be sharing my successes and failures with you.

A very brief bio about my roasting history for perspective, it's not at all that impressive, but I'll share it nonetheless. I started roasting coffee either in 1996 or 1997, the same way all of us do, with the cheapest clobbered together parts and simple equipment. My family has a background in beer making, my grandfather decided that being a chiropractor wasn't for him after about 15 years in the field and then switched careers and went on to work at Anheuser Busch Brewery. Apparently he was a humble guy and his favorite part of the job was the free case of beer every 2 weeks. Both his sons were early adopters of the home brewing movement and I used to make beer with my dad growing up. When that transitioned to my post high school days, I continued on sourcing my own beer making materials from the Williams Brewing Catalogue, and in those days, they also offered just 3 types of green coffee and a decaf. The hook was set and the rest was history. Over the years, and thru various equipment upgrades, I finally got serious about 7-8 years ago, tracking what I was doing and seriously trying hone my skills. The real self education came when I went from the feeble and partially controllable Behmor to the Quest M3 and I was able to influence the coffee entirely manually without any digital babysitting. But I've made many great roasts on the Behmor, so I'm not kicking sand. I also happened to bake a lot of coffee too, however. So, 16 or so years later, here I am with a 1 kilo gas drum commercial roaster and my Quest M3. I'd gauge my "talents" or skills as only a mediocre to moderately skilled home roaster with a good palate and plenty of free time to study the craft.

Enough of that.

Here's a few random photo's of the tour:

The coffee lab. James has a deep passion for levers as we all know. This was all very cool.








The main roasting room, well organized. James is so incredibly into coffee even now, that he'd interrupt his own presentation to stop everything, rip open a massive container of coffee and have everyone dunk their heads in and smell the greens. His eyes would light up. I don't think his passion has diminished one iota.







James has a very different background as many of you might know. In person he's the exact opposite of what any of us would consider a coffee "guru". He's a perfectionist no doubt, and his background in classical music probably brought him the same perspective on coffee much in the same way as medical schools seeking college grads with geography degrees (not the traditional vein, but a different and fresh perspective) rather than biology or chemistry degrees. This happens a lot, and the types that excel are usually the people with abstract backgrounds. Something tells me a good poet or songwriter could be especially suited to creating amazing coffee.....

Dogma isn't his thing, outside of some basic core principles, when asked what the best piece of advice he's ever received as a blossoming coffee roaster is simply this, " free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it". He had a goal and a focus and it was intensely his. He followed his own tune. He's not one to beat around the bush and he chooses his words extremely carefully and speaks very little. He is, however quite gracious and approachable.

His massive Probat GG75 handles the bulk of the roasting requirements. Jen leads a team of four roasters, manages the entire Production Manager duties, as well as training roasters and her resume is a who's who of amazing coffee. She roasted for Ecco Cafe under our own local Andrew Barnett. They also have a 22kilo that sits ten feet away. I could hardly contain my glee as I stood there listening to someone my age who could roast every single one of us on this forum under the table, without flinching. She's reserved, gentle and kind.












So, to those of us interested, here's some gleaned roasting concepts, some quite simple, some that challenge what "we" (myself included) do here often, which is miss the forrest for the leaves, etc. I don't even care to debate the concepts with anyone, I just wanted to share them and let those do with them what they will. Many of these are how I interpreted what they shared, so you can't take them as direct quotes or anything. They are for the most part, slightly tainted thru my own lens, but I stayed honest to the message.

Major Emphasis -Before you even start

-Get your face down in your green coffee. Suck it in, breath it in! Get a picture in your head what YOU think you can detect in it and what YOU want to bring out of it. Someone else's opinions at this stage mean exactly squat. Their environment is different, their skills are different, their gear is different. The clearer you are on what your senses are telling you with the green coffee before you load the roaster, the better off your results are going to be. This means getting a feel for the bean size, density, shape too. I'll skip past the freshness and storage of green coffee points that we all should know by now.

-Never charge your roaster anywhere near it's stated capacity. You want control, not quantity. This especially correlates with the goals of small time home roasters. Starting out, he charged his 7 kilo IR-7 with 7 pounds of coffee so that he'd end up with just over 5 pounds per batch. That's major sacrifices in volume for control. It's a good place to start as an amateur too.

-Pre-heat your drum very thoroughly, patiently until it's all uniformly quite hot. You don't want to have to make corrections during your ramp on a particular coffee because you've nose-dived your stored heat capacity. This will only compound your problems and troubleshooting as you go thru various profiles of multiple coffees. You'll never be able to learn anything well enough, if your drum isn't properly heated to begin with.

Minor Emphasis

-Your game plan is going to be relatively determined by your beans density/moisture content and where they came from. For the most part, excellent coffee can be obtained by fixing certain aspects and varying only a few. One of the fixed aspects for nearly every coffee he roasts is a charge temp of 400°F with little variation from that point. They have to deal with changing conditions in a cold warehouse in the morning and adapt as the day warms up and their massive gear stores more and more heat.

The other interesting aspect that they adjust very little between different roasts is actually air flow (surprisingly to me). They, for the most part, standardize that too, and just pay attention to how the coffee is reacting to the heat.

From this point, we can dissect that the variables that will need to be tweaked in order to achieve the outcomes you're hoping for is the charge weight.

Turning point matters. James immediately, clearly rebuffed most notions that it's artifact of the roasting process and "not relevant". To him, it is very relevant. Since his charge temps are relatively standardized, he can acquire a clear picture of how much heat he's going to need to push the coffee with thru the ramp, focusing also on how his moisture levels are being affected specifically, and by how long a given coffee nosedives to the turning point. Notice, I didn't say how low (temp), but how long (time). With standardized (under capacity) charges, with little practice or exaggerated efforts to initially profile, a coffee will tell the roaster the heat it's going to need to ramp properly within a sample batch or two.

After which, you then establish the time it takes for the coffee to finish. The time is free to vary as well, and they minimize high temps , never above 440°F in the drum after the onset of 1C, which is allowed to coast along for various levels of development as the bean tryer reveals the characteristics of that cultivar.

Moisture loss is a very important thing to consider, and to minimize rapid decreases at the end of the roast as best as possible (meaning know your ramp and where you're heading so you don't overshoot and dry the coffee). Scorching or the opposite, baking your coffee is a result of a bad understanding of the moisture content of your beans and how they are uniquely reacting to the drum temp. Older coffee's will turn to papery,weak tasting "filler" for blends if they've lost moisture and the roaster has to tweak their profile in order to make it drinkable.

Some of this triggers a bit of curiosity in many of us. But I'm a firm believer in minimizing variables early on till we know what the hell we're doing, and if we're honest with ourselves, many of us stumble blindly thru profile after profile tweaking many different things, and never really learning what specific "tweak" resulted in a desired result. So, it's a bit of a refreshing approach worth trying.

It is very interesting to note, although I'm not going to disclose specifics of the profile sheets I saw (they passed it around freely for us to learn from), I did see very tight and almost generalized parameters for 80% of all their coffees. 95% of all their coffees (loosely) finish within a tight band of somewhere between 20-ish degrees on their temp. Their development times post 1C are within a very narrow range of around 2 minutes. And their end times finish within an even tighter range.

He did also share something that stood out to me, that one "ringer" that seems to require completely different consideration on temps and profiles is coffees from Uganda, interestingly enough. And the common concepts that most of us know about lower altitude, lower density coffees such as most Brazilians, needing lower temps, and harder, higher elevation coffees, Kenyas, Ethiopians, etc need lots of heat power are already sorta established or ingrained into our roasting psyche.

He and Jen have an overflowing glee for what Guatemala and Nicaragua produces. Their goals on Central's is to tame the "Brightness" only as needed, by lengthening the roast time slightly more than average, never with higher temps, especially when either of those origins are destined to an espresso beverage. They can zero in on a Central with laser-like focus, searching specifically and only for coffees who's brightness is accompanied by cleanliness in the cup. They can't battle a Central that is super bright, and also plays the tune that an Indonesian "twangy" coffee might. They know what they're looking for and seek specifics from each cultivar.

I'll end this dreadfully long post with one final comment. When I asked James if he could pick only one of his coffees above all others that he's personally enjoyed the most; he lit up and without a single moments hesitation proclaimed : Nekisse from Ninety+ :lol:


Cheers folks.
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MSH
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#2: Post by MSH »

Incredible (& very detailed) post Tom. Thanks so much for sharing! I always will have a soft spot for BB. Many years ago when my wife and I were still in the Bay Area James & BB showed me what coffee could be and I never looked back.

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happycat
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#3: Post by happycat »

Thanks for this. Great pix. Consider inline definitions if you are open to broadening your audience.
LMWDP #603

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JK
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#4: Post by JK »

Great Post Tom...
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kwantfm
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#5: Post by kwantfm »

Thanks Tom for a really informative post. I was lucky to get a small amount of Nekisse this year... certainly spectacular!
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tamarian
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#6: Post by tamarian »

Oh man, you took me there with you. Well written, and really look forward to your 12 week journey. Thanks a lot!

sonnyhad
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#7: Post by sonnyhad »

Awesome Tom, I had no idea it was a 12 week class! Wow, you will learn some great stuff and I can thank you enough for sharing it with us. Your writing style really took us on the tour with you! Very well done!!
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Clint Orchuk
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#8: Post by Clint Orchuk »

Thanks Tom, so much to be learned.

Bodka Coffee
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#9: Post by Bodka Coffee »

Very, very nice post. I look forward to future installments. :D

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hankua
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#10: Post by hankua »

Wow Tom, your a pro; I mean journalist. An inside view on the world of roasting, can't wail for the next installment. Plenty of good tidbits for discussion; industrial roasting vs home roasting. Airflow would be one area to compare.

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