Our Roast Process

Sourcing Our Beans

Our strategy is simple: Buy the best quality coffee. Carry a wide variety of flavor profiles and find something unique to offer.

We only carry specialty coffee, which means it was graded at least 84 points — usually higher — on the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s 100-point scale. The quality of the coffee depends on several factors, including altitude, season, soil and the farmers’ care in harvesting and preparing the beans.

That’s why we take such great care when sourcing our coffee. We are fair trade certified, and we work closely with importers to find coffees that are not only the best quality, but also interesting and pleasingly unique. We keep a variety of origins and tasting notes available, which include a mix of perennial favorites and new, unusual and seasonal flavors.

Steps of the Sourcing Process

  • Importers travel to different origins (like Costa Rica, Kenya and Indonesia); they sample and select coffees there.
  • A sample is shipped to the US. The importers taste it again and, if the beans still get a thumbs-up, place an order.
  • When the shipment arrives, the importers taste it a final time before sending it on to us, the roasters.


Roasting

The coffee “bean” is actually the seed of a berry. Dense, green and hard as a rock, they’re not something you’d normally associate with your aromatic cup of joe. The magic of turning green, stone-like seeds into coffee happens during the roasting process.

Roasting determines the flavor of the finished coffee. It’s a process by which we develop our personalized flavor profiles; recipes that are crafted to perfection over time by our experienced staff who take pride and pleasure in what they do.