Roasting
Why Does Coffee Need to Cool Right After Roasting?
A roast keeps developing after it leaves the heat until the beans cool. Here's why fast, forced-air cooling matters, and what happens when it's too slow.
Guide
Notes from the roastery: what we buy, how we roast it, and what we have learned building coffee programs on the Gulf Coast.
Tagged “co-roasting” · see all of Guide
Roasting
Who Should Rent a Co-Roasting Space?
Most people who call about renting a roaster have already sold coffee somewhere else and outgrown the machine that got them there. Who the Lab actually serves, and who...
Roasting
Should a Coffee Roaster Publish What It Pays for Green Coffee?
We publish what we paid for green coffee, and right now only two of the four coffees we can sell carry the figure. What the practice actually costs a roaster, and wher...
Roasting
How Do You Get a Green Coffee Sample?
A green coffee sample is free on a wholesale importer account and takes two or three business days. Which of the five samples you are sent is what decides how much the...
Roasting
What Zoning Does a Coffee Roastery Need?
Roasting is a manufacturing use, which rules out most storefronts before rent ever comes into it. What the land-use table decides, what the building code calls a roast...
Roasting
Do You Need a Food Permit to Sell Roasted Coffee?
Florida lets you roast at home and sell without a permit, and the exemption ends at the first wholesale order. What the state permit, the FDA registration and the cott...
Roasting
Should You Roast Robusta?
The bitterness in robusta arrives in the seed rather than in the roast. What that means for a small roaster deciding whether to buy a lot, and the cheapest honest way ...
Cafés & Events
Should a Coffee Shop Roast Its Own Coffee?
Why the per-pound saving that justifies in-house roasting mostly disappears at specialty green prices, and what actually decides the question.
Roasting
How Much Green Coffee Do You Have to Buy at Once?
A full bag of green coffee is 132 to 154 pounds depending on the country it grew in, and the boxes below it start at 22. Here is the whole purchase ladder, rung by run...
Roasting
What Is the Minimum Batch Size for a Coffee Roaster?
Most drums keep roasting down to about a third of capacity. What decides your minimum batch is what the hour costs, not the heat. A roaster works through both.
Cafés & Events
How to Sell Wholesale Coffee to Cafes
A cafe that already has a roaster is not comparing your coffee to theirs. It is weighing the cost of changing suppliers against not changing, and that is where most lo...
Roasting
How to Scale a Roast Profile to a Bigger Roaster
A roast curve records what one drum did on one day. When the production roaster is not yours, the thing you hand over is a specification instead.
Roasting
What Are the Ventilation Requirements for a Coffee Roaster?
One word covers a building approval and an air permit, and they aren't issued by the same office or measured in the same way. Here's what each one asks about your roas...
