Come take a journey with us to see how your coffee is made, start to finish!
There is a whole world of coffee to explore, so what are you waiting for?!
Starting at the Farm!
How are the beans grown?
Coffee farmers do an exceptional amount of work to make sure every coffee plant is grown at optimal conditions.
You may have seen the elevation that your coffee grows at, but have you ever wondered why?
If a coffee is grown at a high elevation, it takes longer for the coffee bean to ripen. This creates a denser bean, as opposed to a lighter bean.
Dense coffee beans tend to be higher quality and are important for the roaster to know when making adjustments at the roaster.
What about the processing of the beans?
Believe it or not, the beans are not picked off the coffee plant.
A coffee cherry is picked from the plant and inside the cherry is a bean covered in mucilage.
There are a few different ways this coffee cherry is processed to ultimately get a dry, unroasted coffee bean.
Different farms utilize different techniques to process the beans, leading to different flavor results.
For example, a natural processed coffee may have brighter taste notes and higher variability.
Conversely, a wet processed coffee may look more consistent, but have more subtle taste notes.
Commercially processed coffee may simply use a washed process that sorts beans by density, even if some have imperfections.
Specialty grade coffee beans are not only sorted by density, but also hand-sorted to pick out any coffee beans that have imperfections.
Pro tip: Next time you buy coffee, consider whether your coffee is considered specialty or not! You can be assured that all the coffee in our store is 100% specialty graded.
At the Roaster!
What do you do with a bunch of raw coffee beans?
Be honest: when you were younger, you definitely thought coffee beans start out brown. It's okay, so do most people!
Coffee roasting companies like Royalty Premium Coffee roast the green coffee beans a very specific way that depends on all the agriculture and processing behind the type of bean.
Roasting coffee is an art because the taste, flavor, smoothness, and texture of the coffee is heavily dependent on the roast.
Seems like a lot of pressure, doesn't it?
How do you roast coffee?
Technically, anyone who has an oven could roast coffee. However, many roasters use special machines that are designed to create consistency amongst the coffee beans.
All coffee roasting machines also come with adjustable features such as heat, airflow, and drum speed.
The job of the coffee roaster is to make small adjustments throughout the roast to obtain a desired result.
Just like a pilot has to carefully land an airplane, the roaster has to gently land the bean using different gauges to the desired result!
Generally speaking, the heat applied to the roaster slowly declines and the airflow into the roaster slowly increases as the roast progresses.
Did you say popcorn?
There are different "markers" the roaster is looking for throughout the roast to make adjustments from.
For example, coffee beans actually crack towards the end of the roast, similar to popcorn! This tells the roaster that the coffee is in the "development" stage and the heat should be close to none at this point.
Pro tip: roasting in small batches allows the roaster to investigate any potential outliers after the roast is complete and is often preferred by consumers! At Royalty Premium Coffee, we only roast your order at a time, so we investigate every bean!
The Aftermath
When is the best time to drink it?
Like most products, the fresher the better!
Pro tip: if your coffee bag does NOT have a roast date on it, don't buy it. Knowing when your coffee is roasted is extremely important to ensuring a quality cup of coffee. All of Royalty Premium Coffee's bags are dated so you know you'd get a fresh product!
After the beans have been roasted, they are then cooled for 15 minutes and then packaged.
For the science nerds: Coffee bags should always have a valve on them that allows carbon dioxide to be released without letting oxygen in. This will prevent the beans from oxidizing and getting bitter: a process known as oxidation.
Why is my current coffee bitter?
Did you know coffee doesn't have to be bitter all the time? And, yes, even when black.
Coffee gets bitter the longer it sits around on the shelf. Many grocery stores don't specify the roast date because they know it's been roasted a long time ago.
To get smoother tasting coffee that isn't bitter, get coffee that is roasted to-order. Lucky for you, all of Royalty Premium Coffee is roasted to-order so you can taste coffee for what it is!
Key Takeaway
Coffee is so much more than people make it out to be.
It is both an art and a science.
It has a lot of potential that is suppressed by the indiscriminate picking of the cherries, the long-ago roast dates, and the commercial processing involved.
For that reason, it's what most people think coffee as.
Now that you know what goes into your cup of coffee every morning, consider trying our specialty coffee!
Pro tip: people LOVE our Brazilian dark roast! It's not overly bitter like most dark roasts & has an amazing dark chocolate body to it that people really enjoy!