Meet our roast style

When we roast a coffee, we are guided by the raw material potential and about our “coffee in progress” vision. 

Let’s explain...

The raw coffee can be more or less complex. Complexity refers to the number of different tastes and aromas one coffee can deliver. The more aromas and different tastes you identify in your coffee, the more complex it is considered. QGraders score the coffees with points, the highest scores go to the most complex coffees. We tend to consider this approach and we try to highlight the complexity of an amazing coffee by roasting it lighter. This is valid for our high quality seasonal microlots.  If the raw material is not overly complex but still delicious, we roast it to highlight it’s dominant aromatic notes making sure we wrap them around sweetness and chocolaty creaminess. This is our roast style for single origins and blends. 

The high complexity coffees usually have a higher acidity, which is a positive attribute if it is well controlled throughout the roasting process. Still, there are many people that don’t conceive coffee being predominantly acidic and we are perfectly ok with that. We believe in uniting coffee people through taste, not dividing them, therefore we do our best to develop a low acidity and high sweetness in less complex raw material. Check out our Blends and Single Origins for that style.

We have learned that people are different and any rule coffee world ever had has been at some point over ruled. Therefore we have divided our coffee roasting style in four stages, that differentiate themselves through technical  the roast profile approach, roast time, development time, roasted coffee colour, solubility potential.

Medium dark roast  

This style favours body over clarity, creaminess over brightness. We develop the coffees during roasting so that they are able to deliver a thicker mouthfeel, a creamy body and intense sweet caramelised aromas.  We always insure these coffees have a vivid punch on the attack but usually they finish with a long lasting chocolaty bitter sweet aftertaste 

We recommend these coffees for espresso and milk based drinks, especially for automatic espresso machines that have a lower extraction efficiency. They can also make a delicious sweet full bodied filter but will lack acidity, complexity and brightness.

Medium roast  

We usually apply this style to reveal the single origin coffees terroir, varietal and processing flavour profile. We focus on enhancing the dominant aromas we identify in the coffee beans, ensuring we can deliver a balanced cup, easy to extract. These coffees have a distinct personality, are sweet, exhibit a mild specific acidity and most of the times have a voluptuous dark chocolate aftertaste. 

We recommend this roast style for coffees prepared as espresso and milk based drinks, especially both for manual, semiautomatic and automatic espresso machines. The filter method can be very satisfying with this type of roast, as it delivers a sweet, distinctive cup, with a medium body and balanced profile. Still, it will not be the cleanest and brightest cup for this method.

Medium light roast 

Our roast style for these coffees has a clear sensory target : fruitiness and sweetness. This means you can easily extract all their concentrated deliciousness on a semiautomatic espresso machine, you can brew a vivid V60 or enjoy a sweet treat on Aeropress or French Press. They are so good you can get away even pulling shots on automatic espresso machines, so keep your mindset open for experiments. 

This roast style is suited for manual espresso machines that have higher extraction yield, manual brew gear, automatic filter machines. Many of these coffees can be extracted by automatic espresso machines but you will have to understand it is a compromise.