My loving wife brought to my attention that when I made my blog about how Light & Life came to be, I didn’t actually talk at all about the actual roasting process. So ladies and gentlemen, here I am to rectify that situation.
The roasting process started about 3-4 months before I ever roasted a single coffee bean. I started to ask my wife what it would look like to get my own roaster, and start saving us a lil money on coffee. I knew that green coffee, especially for the coffee that I wanted to drink, would be a lot cheaper if I roasted it myself instead of buying it from specialty coffee shops around Louisville. Even though the roaster was going to be expensive, it was a piece of equipment that would definitely have no problem paying for itself over time: especially if I started selling the coffee myself as well!
After months of research and countless hours of YouTube videos comparing different roasters at different prices, I finally decided to get myself a fresh roast SR800 and try my hand at this whole roasting thing. I had finally decided to pursue my dreams of opening my own coffee shop by taking the first step: making great coffee that I wanted to share with the world. I wish that I could say that I knocked it out of the park in the first roast, but that is so far from the truth. I had received 6 pounds of green coffee with the purchase of my roaster: 3 pounds from Columbia, and 3 pounds from Costa Rica.
The hardest part of the beginning process of roasting the coffee wasn’t actually the roasting itself, it was setting up all of the equipment for repeatability! I had to get a thermometer, I had to get a heat sensor that would fit inside of the actual roaster to keep the roasting temperature consistent, and then setting all of that equipment to be recorded onto the roasting software, Artisan. Once all of the equipment was working to satisfaction, I could begin to roast bad coffee. Coffee roasting as much as it has a scientific process: (going through the different phases of roasting, development time, percentage of loss, etc.) It is very much an artistic process at the same time! Making decisions to raise the heat, raise the fan speed, how long to roast after first crack, all affect the roasting process and the final product that you’ll get out of the roaster.
I tried to approach the roasting process itself in a scientific way: raise the temperature on the minute marks, raise the fan speed on the 30 second marks. The more beautiful my graph looked, the more beautiful the coffee would taste! Coffee beans, just like most things in life, are not that simple. It definitely made drinkable coffee, but the coffee was drinkable in the same way that those little packs of ground coffee that you get in hotels are drinkable. The scientific method made coffee in the same way that robots are made: cold, lifeless, and efficient. But the thing with coffee beans is that they’re little balls of energy that are literally popping with flavor! You really have to pay close attention to how the beans are roasting, and adjust your settings to the rhythm of those fun jumping beans.
It may sound silly, but I really like to approach coffee like a reporter: the beans have the story, and it’s my job to tell that story in the best way that I can. You listen to the beans, you let them set the pace of the roast, listen to them when they go on a rabbit trail, but always keep them on track. Great stories are curated by great storytellers; great coffee is curated by great roasters. Ones that aren’t afraid to let the coffee take the lead and bring out the best of the story that it has to tell. That’s what we strive to do at Light & Life Coffee Co.: listen to the stories of great coffee beans, and to tell their story in a way that brings light and life to every cup. So the next time that you’re drinking a cup of coffee from us, take the time to listen to your cup and see if there are any stories that you hear as you sip.