Sourcing high quality beans is one of the most important and enjoyable aspects of the coffee roasting process for us. It may well be, or become, just as important to you too. When sourcing our coffee, traceability of the coffee beans we buy is essential. We want to be able to trace those beans right back to the farmer – perhaps even knowing the field in which they were grown.
So many coffee beans are produced en masse by huge, faceless organisations who own many, vast farms. Their aim to produce as many beans as possible, as cheaply as possible. Often lots of chemicals are used to ensure the beans taste exactly the same year after year. This definitely isn’t what we at norfolk.coffee are after.
Coffee is similar to wine, in that the crop each year should be slightly different depending upon the temperature, the rainfall, the amount of sunshine etc. Many, many factors will affect how a coffee will taste from one year to another.
Coffee farmers do not get huge returns for growing such a popular product so we always want to know what he or she is getting paid when we buy their beans. Even the Fairtrade price for coffee is shockingly low. If the farmers return isn’t what we consider high enough, we don’t buy the beans.
We work closely with our three importers.We have have worked closely with each of them for more than ten years. We let them know what bean varietals, country of origin and quantities we are looking out for. They know that we will only buy beans with complete traceability and of the highest quality. When have beans are available that suit our profile we will sometimes go to their lab and do a cupping or they will send samples to us to try before we decide whether to purchase them.
Often we are lucky enough to get to meet the farmers who produce the beans we purchase. Their enthusiasm and passion for their product is infectious. We find this inspirational and certainly makes us even more determined to do them justice with the end product.
We are always on the lookout for new coffees.
Occasionally we come across a bean which amazes us. A few years back we roasted our first Pacamara beans from the Montes Urales farm in El Salvador. We were blown away by the way they roasted and the awesome taste they gave in the cup. Our importing partners now keeps an eye out for Pacamara beans and updates us when some are available.
When we have decided which coffee to buy, we do a few sample roasts. This is to find which profile gives the best taste for that particular coffee. There are so many variables such as temperature, airflow, burner power, the amount of beans in the drum, drum speed and also the weather. These all affect how a coffee will roast and how it will taste in the cup.
The day after roasting the samples we all get together and do a blind cupping. This primarily consists of drinking (or slurping) lots of black coffee, brewed in exactly the same way, and deciding which tastes the best. As the name suggests, we don’t know which coffee is which until we check the names under the containers.
It isn’t always the coffees that scores the highest that we choose but ones that we think offer good value and we really like.
Everyone tastes coffee differently but we always looking for a coffee that is naturally sweet and has something about it we enjoy and that our customers might like.
Every week we will be tasting all the coffees we roast to ensure that we are producing the same high quality coffee consistently.
