So far, everything is still under control: we have found our equipment, we are working on the identity we want to give to the product, we have studied the tastes of our customers to determine what kind of coffees we want to offer.
But all this is of little use if you don't choose good green coffee. If you don't know the basics of roasting and blending coffee. Making mixtures is much more complex than it seems.
It would be easier to just order a very good green, roast it and offer it in its simplest expression: an original coffee, with its qualities and, sometimes, its shortcomings. We will also offer some, depending on availability, but I find it difficult to base our coffee offering on origins that we know are ephemeral.
On the other hand, a mixture makes it possible to make a coffee offer more flexible, to reach a clientele who likes a certain balance, who seeks the comfort of a coffee to their taste, all year round. Having sold a few bags of coffee for 4 years (hehe), I know the importance that a good blend can have on customer loyalty.
Assembling coffee requires understanding the contribution of the terroirs to the cooked product, applying roasting principles to the beans in question to highlight certain attributes, with the aim of making something that will be good, easy. to brew at home, stable even if the coffee changes from one harvest to another. In short, it's the backbone of a roaster.
For our part, we have developed our blends based on the flavor profiles we want. We then found origins that contributed to these mixtures. We now had to roast them properly to highlight what we wanted. To give an example, the Brazilian coffee that we selected gives a lot of body and nutty aromas, but on its own it would be a little soft. Our natural Ethiopian is explosive and has cocoa notes, but lacks roundness. Shall we “blend” the two together? We already have more balance, and more happy people ;)
PS Our roasting workshop will start shortly, by mid-October. We will then have our 3 blends and some original coffees to offer you :D It will be in break-in mode, so comments will be welcome!
