A Coffee Roasting Adventure

One of the final people I interviewed for this project was Scott from NoCo Coffee. I have been drinking their coffee for about a year. I love it. And they go to my church, so I thought I'd reach out and see if he could tell me anything about coffee roasting. I knew they roasted their beans right here in Greeley, Colorado and that they had been more than willing to chat with some of my friends in years past. I received a quick and friendly reply, and we set up a time for me to come see what they had going on in their warehouse set-up.
Scott began by giving me a quick tour of their small set-up. It mostly consisted of one large room and two smaller rooms. The smaller rooms contained sinks, extra furniture, and equipment for when they set up at Greeley's farmer's market. The one large room contained the roaster, the unroasted coffee, the roasted coffee, and his bagging station- it was clearly the center of the business.
Scott showed me his new roaster. This particular roaster has sensors attached that easily connect to his computer. Additionally, it can roast more beans than his previous roaster. He promised that we would be roasting coffee later and directed me over to the raw beans. Scott gets his coffee from a few different farms. He has Brazilian coffee, Columbia coffee, Costa Rican coffee, and Sumatran coffee. We dug into the beans and sniffed them. This is where I learned the most about what makes the different flavors we get from different coffees. According to Scott, there are three main factors when it comes to the flavor of coffee:
The soil content
The altitude
And the water content of the air

South American coffee has a fruitier, more acidic taste because of the humidity and loose soil. African coffees have a nuttier, less acidic flavor because of the dense, clay-like soil and the higher elevation.

Even within these climates there are differences, though. Scott gave the example of a coffee farm at the bottom of a mountain versus coffee at the top of the mountain. There will be a nuanced flavor difference just because of the elevation the beans grew in. 

After this we brewed a cup of his light-roast, Costa Rican coffee and discussed the flavor of the coffee. 

"What do you taste?" He asked, reclining in his rolling office chair. 

I sipped my coffee nervously, as I wasn't expecting to identify flavors only twenty minutes into the meeting. "It tastes... fruity?" I suggested.

"Bingo." 

We smelled it before it was ground, after it was ground, and after brewing it. We decided that it wasn't our favorite because of it's more mellow, fruity flavor. 

After we finished our coffee we began roasting some of the Sumatra beans. This was one of the most interesting parts for me. He explained all the different temperatures and processes the beans go through. Once we poured the 5 lbs of raw beans into the roaster, we watched the temperature drop until about a minute in when it started raising again. Soon we heard popping, much like popcorn, which is the husk of the bean popping off. He removed beans at each stage and let me smell them, gushing about the scent of caramelized coffee, "If I could live in a scent. This is the one I'd choose." (It smelled like burnt popcorn to me, but don't tell Scott that.)

Since it was a dark-roast coffee, we let it go for a couple minutes longer and released them for cooling at around 411 degrees. He asked for my help in smoothing them out and explained that the amount of oils that are released vary based on how light or dark we roast the beans. 

Perhaps the coolest part of my visit to NoCo coffee when Scott brewed some dark-roast coffee for me. We discussed the different flavors present, and then he had me smell the unroasted beans before sipping more coffee. It was incredible. The scents in the unroasted beans had somehow translated perfectly into the flavor of the drink! Scott said that most roasters can tell how it's going to taste based on the smell alone. 

One of the concepts Scott repeatedly referred back to is that "Coffee is science, art, and heart." He believes one can get so caught up in the science that they lose the artistic elements of appreciating the process and doing what feels right as opposed to what chemistry says is right. This comes through in his coffee as well as in Harbinger's coffee. And I think it's the heart of the reason I'm so fascinated by coffee. There are countless elements, each of them deserving of research and of consideration. I could spend my whole life learning all there is to know and still not know everything.