Artisan Roasting

At Big City Coffee, we hand-select the green coffee beans to order, blending the required varieties or choosing the best single origin gourmet beans. Then we artisan roast the beans in small batches using a 5 kilo drum roaster.  It's an intimate craft process; you hear the beans tumble, feel the heat transfer, smell the coffee as it roasts, then you thrill to the snap and crackle of the beans as they reach the peak of their roast cycle.  The perfect results cascade from the drum into the cooling tray before being inspected again to assure the roast quality.  Your order is then weighed, bagged, and packed by hand, insuring that many of our coffee experts have agreed to put their names on the quality testament for every customer order.

Maintaining Coffee Consistancy And Roast Quality

A customer recently emailed us that they liked our Big City blend and wanted to know about our consistancy and quality control.

That's a great question for any small roaster commited to delivering every order to high standards. The great artisan roasters are fanatics about repeatable processes to achieve predictable results.  It's the variables that will drive the Roastmaster nuts; and the biggest variable is - (drum roll (it's a pun!), please...) - The Bean.

The following is from my reply; it's also posted on the Blog, so you can add your comments, too.

We're roasting all of the Big City Coffee brands 2-3 times a week and deliver it fresh :)

And quality is excellent and consistent...the beans are hand-selected and every roast is 

done on a small batch roaster and monitored by one our expert roastmasters.

We do a tasting several times a week, too, just for fun :)

An issue with small estate coffees is getting enough high-quality beans that are

consistent from season to season.  It's more of a problem with 'single origin' bean,

like PanAltura, or all from one farm...even though the cup quality may be high from season to season,

the taste may vary a little - like wine vintages - because of weather, soil, and other seasonal growing conditions.

With the blends, like Big City, or HiFi,  it's easier to find substitute high quality beans that still maintain the same great taste.  

Megabucks and other large-scale roasters keep the taste the same by:

1) warehousing tons of product for 3-4 years (green beans do not improve with age)

2) using up to 30%+ lower-quality 'filler' bean 

3) and over-roasting to add caramelized sugars to cover the underlying taste

But, if that's what you like, and it fits your budget, you should probably stick with it...