Ok, I know this is drift, but since you guys are going in the roast your own discussion. My wife keeps giving away my roasted coffee to her co workers at the hospital. I am now getting request for coffee. I get so many, I have started NOT liking to roast as it use to be for fun, but now can take me 2-3 hours on the weekends.
I can only roast 500g at a pop and with the cycle time thats maybe 3 runs per hour.
I am actually considering getting a 1K roaster and starting to sell the darn things to her co workers.
But then I remember i already have a job and dont want a second
There is a place at Lake Forest/Irvine Center Drive called Javatini’s. Not only is the coffee bitchin’, but you can call ahead and they will roast the beans to your liking to be ready when you arrive. I stop there on the way to work often and the smell of roasting beans is so thick it gets on your clothes, which I don’t mind!
Ditto for me. I vacuum seal and freeze 4 lbs on arrival and only have 1 lb. open at a time. I love that they custom roast your order, so I receive coffee that was just roasted 2 days prior. That’s almost universally fresher than anything local on a routine basis.
I would say that in the coffee geek world, their reputation is a bit darker roast compared with the very trendy uber lighter roasts right now. By that I mean just more like a full city roast, not a dark roast and certainly nothing on the burnt end like Starbucks. I much prefer that - coffee that has the rich, full bodied flavor but not burnt. By Starbucks’ standard, they would be considered a light roast.
Anyway, I’ve tried a bunch of roasters (many mentioned here) and have found Red Bird to be the best form me. Huge bonus is that it’s $3-5/lb. cheaper than I can get inferior roasts here locally and it shows up at my front door1
I’ve been buying whole beans from Johnson Brothers Coffee Roasters in Madison Wisconsin for some time. They don’t always have great things on offer, but the KII Kenya and the Ulos Batak Sumatra Peaberry currently being offered are excellent and reasonably priced. For points chasers, there’s even a section for coffees that score 90 or more on Coffee Review. Their coffees are generally a light to medium roast.
Yeah - my wife is not a fan of the very light, fruit driven coffees - which I do like. Red Bird is a good compromise for us - enough boldness for her, but with enough secondary interest for me.
I also like the light roast, fruit driven roasts (from Africa usually), but I don’t like it all the time. Red Bird hits the sweet spot IMO. And, just as a personal opinion, I think that’s how coffee is at it’s best. There is a place for the lighter roasts, but I view it as an interesting profile, not the pinnacle. Their dark roast is very good but a bit too dark for me. It still doesn’t come close to the burnt flavors of a Stabucks. Once you’ve had really good coffee prepared appropriately, it’s tough to drink that stuff.
While this may seem gross to some, my personal critique of coffee is if you can drink it many hours after prepared (in a non-heated thermos) when it’s cold and it still has an appealing profile. I can do that with Red Bird (and probably many others).
Another personal opinion, but I think many people with lighter roasts tend to “under-dose” their coffee in terms of grams per cup and it ends up thin and acidic. Coffee should be bold and intense, but never burnt for mre.
I bought a bag of El Salvador natural process beans by Coava the other day – never having heard of them before, but the barista highly recommended them. It wasn’t cheap, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t make the finest cup I’ve had in a long time. Roast appears to be medium-light.
Fortuitous discussion as my supplier (on the Big Island) is going on vacation and will not roast for another 2 weeks. I’m giving Old Bisbee a try. It’s certainly priced well at half what I usually pay.
I generally prefer less acid and darker roast and drink only black coffee. There honestly isn’t any place around here with sufficiently high quality beans that it is worth buying. Generally speaking I feel that coffee shop retail quality has deteriorated dramatically over the last 25 years.
Bodhi Leaf, where I buy amazing green beans, just moved to a new location and opened a coffee store where they sell roasted beans and do a Starbucks thing–see if they ship.
coffee futures are currently at a low, so it is surprising how much the boutique coffee roasters command for that 12 oz bag. For the consumer, a pound of quality green beans costs $4-5 and yields 12-13 oz of roasted coffee.
