For a long time, coffee was simple…it was simply roasted, sold cheap and slurped down all day. And then…just like the beer industry, micro small batch took coffee’s creative side to a new industry level. Every step of the process, coffee nerds pour their knowledge and insane amounts of care into the process. They visit the families and farms that grow the coffee, build wonderful relationships with the farmers, and develop unique roasts that bring out that bean’s individual flavor profiles. Roasting in these small batches allows amazing attention to the detail.
Specialty coffee was first coined by Erna Knutsen who was a leader in the coffee world around 1974. Erna knew the potential and pushed forward for coffee’s full growth in the specialty industry. Thanks to that launch, specialty beans represent 55% of the coffee market share pie.
Why is small-batch coffee so extraordinary?
The flavor of a cup of coffee is the result of a long chain of alterations from the seed to the cup. Aromas come from inside the coffee beans as it grows and matures. The compounds and metabolites that accumulate during seed maturation contribute directly through roasting reactions to the broad spectrum of aromas and flavors in the final cup. There is a lot to understand between quality and coffee chemistry where small batch coffee can shine.
Roasting is The Magic
Small-batch allows a little legroom to innovate these roasting techniques and to experiment freely with taste. Starting here, coffee roasting happens by applying heat to the beans so that a chemical reaction develops into the complex aromatic and flavor components of that bean. Now, the goal is to get a delicate balance of flavor, acidity, aroma, and body.
Roasting for the Specialty Distinction
The language lingo in the specialty coffee world is just as complex as the process itself. Graders are similar to sommeliers but in the coffee world, highly trained to sniff out the most imperceptible defects and differences in specialty beans. A coffee is given the rank as a specialty when it scores up into 80 points or higher on a 100 point scale according to the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA). This is determined by cupping, or the way coffee professionals rank and compare coffees. When compared to wine, coffee has a higher number of flavors and aromatics. This is why the cuppers rely on the SCA’s Flavor Wheel which is a detailed road map of vocab used to describe and rank coffees.
The art and science of roasting
Specialty roasters transform green coffee beans into the aromatic brown beans that followers purchase with delight in favorite local stores and cafés. Becoming an expert roaster takes years of training just as with any other industry, they are masters of their craft. Reading the beans in order to make decisions with split-second timing is the difference between perfectly roasted and a ruined batch of beans, which can happen in a matter of seconds. Beans need to reach an internal temperature of about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, to begin turning brown. The caffeol which is a fragrant oil trapped inside the beans starts to emerge. This process called pyrolysis is at the key to roasting in that it produces the flavor and aroma of the coffee we know and love. After roasting the beans, they are then cooled by either air or water. The importing country usually roasts the beans since it’s a timely nature to get freshly roasted beans to the consumer as quick as possible. Ref: NCAUSA
Customers love to get involved by wanting to know where their beans are coming from, techniques on how they’re roasted, and the specialty flavor profiles to expect in the bag of beans. The smaller roasting guys are often a bit more transparent about their suppliers, so customers can fully enjoy knowing each cup of coffee is guilt-free. More companies are taking the effort to code their small batches so the consumer can follow and find out exact details such as information on roasting, sources where it came from and the farming family relationship the roaster has with their community.
Look for Fairtrade
Fairtrade is an important relationship. The quality and care of the coffee depend on the skill of the families farming it. They are the ones digging in the ground, growing small seeds and nurturing the farms. Hard work goes into getting the laborious beans to the end consumer. Most of the world’s coffee is done by 25 million small-scale farmers. These are farms and farmers working 5 acres or less with the average Fair-trade farmer working just 3.4 acres of land. Many farms depend on growing coffee to support their families along with entire communities relying on the yearly harvest.
Coffee tastes better when it’s fresh which makes small-batch important. As soon as the roasted bean comes into contact with oxygen it begins the slow process of becoming stale. After three weeks it loses its optimum flavor and attributes, which is why we recommend buying coffee in small batches, so you’ll never have to drink it when it’s not the best.
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