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| Roasting Coffee |
| Roasting coffee is as much an art and craft as tasting it. Beans must be carefully roasted to bring out their special varietal flavor. Different varieties of beans are often blended prior to and after roasting. Once roasted, beans are sometimes flavored. All these options provide a myriad of choices for you to enjoy. |
Green beans |
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 raw arabica viewed at 100% |
Whether
it's a sample or a bulk shipment, coffee arrives at Thanksgiving in
this raw, unroasted state. Green beans are essentially tasteless,
though not odorless. While they don't smell like roasted coffee, healthy green beans do have aroma. In fact, a coffee buyer sniffs raw beans to assess their quality. Fruity, floral, milky, musty, dirty, sour, camphor-like, and petroleum-like aromas all have specific, significant meanings to the knowing nose of a green buyer. |
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| Once selected, green beans must be roasted to release the flavor and aroma locked in their 200-plus chemical compounds. Heat produces over 400 naturally-occuring compounds that create the flavor of roasted coffee. | |||
Light roasted beans |
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 roast arabica viewed at 100% |
When
beans roast at high heat, their sugars develop; and they begin to
take on their accustomed coffee color, aroma, and taste. Pyrolysis
– a chemical change brought about at about 405°F – occurs
so that the beans' starches convert to sugar. A successful light roast (415-425°F) generates enough sugar to prevent bitterness while allowing the beans' individual, varietal flavor to prevail. All the coffee's sugars are retained, so its varietal characteristics are primary in its final flavor. |
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Medium to dark roasted beans |
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 dark roast viewed 100% |
When
a roast is allowed to continue, beans darken, and their flavor profile
changes. Oils combine with proteins and salts while sugars caramelize
and eventually carbonize. Much as in a marshmallow over a campfire,
the roast color turns from light brown to crisp black as sugars carbonize.
These chemical changes produce the stronger, more pungent taste characteristic of a dark roast (465-480°F). |
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Pick your roast |
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The
rule to remember: The lighter the roast color, the milder and sweeter and heavier in body the brew; the darker the roast color, the stronger and less sweet the brew. |
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Ranging
from lightest to darkest, our four roasts are...
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| At the higher temperatures needed to produce dark roasts, both sugars and caffeine burn out of beans. Light and dark roasts differ in body and caffeine content as well as in flavor... | ||||||
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Blended beans |
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We often blend varieties of coffee to emphasize and balance their particular traits. Coffees are blended both before and after roasting. | |||||
Before roasting |
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| Our roasters select green coffees from different regions, blend them, and roast them together. All the beans are the same color at the finish of the roast. We'll gladly share the coffees involved, but we'll keep the proportions to ourselves in these two examples... | ||||||
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| After roasting | ||||||
| Light and dark beans may be combined after roasting. Examples include... | ||||||
Popular combinations |
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| Each of these is an "after roasting" blend... | ||||||
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Flavored beans |
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| For those who enjoy flavrs not naturally present in coffee, we're glad to apply them while the beans are still warm from roasting. And let's face it, coffee is probably nature's best flavor-carrying medium, complimenting everything from chocolate to vanilla, hazelnut, and Irish Cream. | ||||||
Decaffeinated beans |
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For
coffee lovers who abstain from the caffeine buzz, we happily roast
a full line of decaffeinated coffees.
Decaffeination removes at least 97 percent of the natural caffeine
in coffee beans, leaving only 1 to 5 milligrams of caffeine in a five-ounce
cup of coffee, compared with the 60 to 180 milligrams in a cup of
regular. There are several methods used to draw the caffeine out of green coffee beans before roasting, which are either direct or indirect. In direct methods, the beans are steamed or soaked in water, then the decaffeinating agent (such as coffee oils, activated charcoal, or ethyl acetate) is mixed in directly with the beans, and finally the beans are steamed and dried, removing both the agent and the caffeine. Indirect methods (such as the patented Swiss Water Process ™) mix water with the steamed beans, which draws out the caffeine as well as important coffee flavors and aromas. The water is then separated from the beans, decaffeinated with a decaffeinating agent, and recycled back into the beans. |
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Keep it fresh! |
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| Once
roasted, our coffee beans are stored in a vacuum packaged bag with
a freshness valve. This prevents the beans from staling, which they
begin to do immediately after roasting if exposed to oxygen. At room
temperature, coffee will lose over half of its flavor after just two
weeks in the open air! Luckily, vacuum packaging allows us to store your coffee in an oxygen-free environment immediately after roasting, keeping it fresh for weeks. The system uses an air-tight bag equipped with a one-way freshness valve which allows the natural gasses emitted by freshly roasted coffee to escape but doesn't allow air back into the bag. |
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Mail Order 800-648-6491 - Wholesale 800-462-1999 or (707) 964-0118
© 1999-2008 Thanksgiving Coffee Company. All rights reserved. P.O. Box 1918, Fort Bragg, California 95437