Roasting Coffee Is Like Ageing Fine Wine

What gives your coffee its flavor and body is the roasting process it undergoes after the coffee beans are harvested, scoured and dried.

Roasting coffee beans brings out the characteristics hidden within each bean. It results in the revelation of a coffee’s true personality that tickles and deeply satisfies your taste buds each morning.

The process of roasting is for the purpose of balancing the acidity level of the beans with a certain degree of sweetness.

A coffee that is sweeter and light bodied is roasted for less time than it takes to come up with a fuller-bodied brew with chocolatey undertones that undergoes longer roasting time.

During roasting, a host of physical and chemical changes occur within the bean, the first being its expansion to twice its original size.

Just like corn being popped, the coffee bean releases moisture, and its color changes depending on the length of the roasting process. When the bean lets go of its moisture content and expands, it pops, just like popcorn, and this sound is called the “crack”.

Roasting coffee is both an art and a science. A coffee roaster determines the perfect roast through the sight, smell and sound of a coffee bean.

Roasting also requires taking the time and temperature data during the whole process. It will take decades of roasting experience before one can rightly call oneself a master coffee roaster.

It does not end here, however. Just like fine wine, coffee undergoes a “cupping” process, known as a taste test.

Several beans from different batches are ground and placed in separate cups, and boiling water poured over them. The coffee grounds that rise to the surface are removed, and the resulting liquid is smelled, tasted, and rated according to aroma, body, and taste.

Next time you take a sip from your coffee blend, you’ll know what you’re tasting is as fine as a good glass of wine.