Roastery
Our Roast Style
Paloma one of our founders is of Italian origin so Italian coffee culture has always been present in our understanding of coffee. On the other hand, our friendship with coffee producers helps us understand that the Italian style is not the best for appreciating the subtleties of each bean, and usually prefer medium roasts. Having a coffee shop where we see firsthand the reaction of our customers when we offer them different roasting styles has given us a broad vision from the coffee plant to the cup. This is how we have developed a broad and flexible style focused on the drinks that customers enjoy.
We have a classic line with washed process coffees which we roast relatively slowly to reduce acidity and gain body for milk-based espresso drinks, creating a coffee friendly to many palates. We use naturally processed beans with aggressive fermentations for pour-overs and to make a specialty flat white; this drink is aimed at young drinkers already familiar with fruity and modern coffees. In this line, we seek faster roasts with just enough development to mellow down acidity and integrate the coffee’s fruity acidity.
Lastly, for our most valuable coffees, coming from Mexico's most renowned producers, we seek light roasts under a more Scandinavian style. Prioritizing the unique notes that each coffee bean provides, we use relatively fast roasts ensuring that the development does not extinguish the floral notes but also does not leave us at risk of having raw notes.
Loring Smart Roast
Our roasting equipment is a Loring SmartRoast produced in Santa Rosa, California, it offers competitive advantages in several areas. The first one is that the system uses an indirect flame, in other words, it is an air roaster that uses more convective heat (oven) instead of conductive (pan) to transfer heat to the beans. Convection is more reactive which helps us to see flame changes immediately reflected in the bean temperature. It is especially useful for delicate beans where minimal variations have repercussions in flavor nuances.
An example of a roasting profile where we benefit significantly is when we aim to drop the temperature towards the end of roasting. This might seem simple, but when you have a ton of metal at a temperature over 200°C, it is not a trivial job to slow down the heat momentum. This strategy helps us maintain bean development without reaching higher final temperatures.
Loring has useful automation features like opening the roaster door to drop the coffee when the beans have reached a determined temperature, preheating, between batch protocols to keep the heating mass constant, cool down protocols, and even automating a complete roast.
Loring has a closed system; the insulation helps to be less vulnerable to external temperatures but also achieves roasting with minimal oxygen present. This is why degassing in a Loring takes more time, which helps us gain time for shipping.
Lastly, an extraordinary element is the efficiency and cleanliness of the roaster. Its gas consumption is extremely low, giving us savings of around 80%, making it a more responsible equipment in terms of fossil fuel use. Adding to the efficiency theme, its design is compact, reducing the space it occupies; this is especially positive for us since in our project, the roaster is the heart of our café, visible all the time. Being in an open space to the public, the cleanliness of its emissions is something that customers appreciate, instead of struggling with smoke.
Technology use
We further empower our roaster with specialized tools. We register the humidity, density, hardness, water activity hard numbers as well as our sample defect assessment. We register all the variables in Cropster that connect to our roasters and that lets us track and register every detail of the roasting process. We find the weight loss and the color of the roasted coffee. The next step is to cup the coffee and do a complete evaluation considering all the previous information. We pack our coffee with a nitrogen flush to displace oxygen and stop the oxidation process. Coffee is an agronomical product that deteriorates with time and changes day by day. We strive to have as much data as possible to react fast to its evolution and keep consistency.
Nucleus Link
We have a close relationship with our coffee farmers and a big part of communicating is comparing constantly the flavor notes of their coffee over time. Although we try to cup the coffee with the farmer (physically) at least twice a year, more sessions are needed to have constant feedback between harvests. Having the same sample roaster makes it possible to evaluate the same coffee virtually. Thanks to our equipment area we can make volume purchases of sample roasters and give these roasters to the farmers at discounted prices in exchange for coffee. In addition to the equipment, we educate farmers who have never cupped their coffee on the standard protocols. Link is a sample roaster designed by Nucleus company based in Australia. It is incredibly easy to use and calibrate it to different altitudes. This specific feature helps us share roasting profiles with the coffee farmers.