What You Should Know About Coffee Blending and Roasting

Honduras

To Each Their Own

First, let us say, to each their own. There are many traditions of roasting and blending techniques that vary by culture, history and personal preference. Often times, we think about the quintessential coffee culture found in Italy. Even in Italy, where espresso was first conceived, people still disagree about what is the best way to enjoy coffee. In Southern Italy, coffee is roasted and blended with an emphasis on low acidity, heavy body and dark roasts. In the northern cities of Italy, most people prefer sweeter and less intense espresso, opting for slightly less dark roasts and coffees blended to highlight these qualities.

“Regardless of preference, we think there’s room enough for everyone to enjoy coffee the way they like it.”

It’s All About The Story

For us, it’s all about the story. We love knowing that each coffee is a labor of love from the time that the coffee was harvested until it is freshly roasted and shipped to your door, ready to be brewed. We feel that the best way to recognize the story of each coffee is for our roasters to carefully source these high quality coffees, roast them lightly to highlight their unique characteristics and let the coffee tell its own story.

We prefer single origin coffees because we are able to enjoy the fruits of the individual farmer’s labors, put the names of the farmers on the bag and celebrate the unique attributes that make their coffee special. By blending different coffees together, you lose some of that story and some of what makes each coffee special.

How Roasting Can Change The Story

While many coffee drinkers are accustomed to the smoky and roasty flavors associated with darker roasts, not all coffees taste that way. When a coffee is roasted, it undergoes several chemical changes. Depending on how the roaster chooses to roast a coffee, they can highlight the flavors that already exist in the coffee, or they can hide them. Simply put, the longer you roast a coffee, the less origin characteristics are present– those unique flavors and qualities that come from how it was grown, harvested and processed – and roasty flavors of smoke and burnt sugars emerge.

We love lightly roasted coffee because this roast level accentuates each coffee’s inherent characteristics that come from its growing region, soil, elevation, weather patterns, and processing method.

Every coffee requires different people along the way to share its story; the farmer, the miller, the roaster, and the brewer. Enjoying a lightly roasted single origin coffee gives you, the consumer, an opportunity to become a part of that coffee’s unique story.

Want to learn about the best coffee in San Francisco? Or learn how to perfectly brew coffee at home!