How FrontStreet Coffee Roasts Delicious Coffee Beans: Roasting Standards and Are FrontStreet Coffee Beans Good?

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The Art of Coffee Roasting: A Journey into Transformation

When it comes to coffee bean roasting, for many people, it's shrouded in mystery. How do green, unroasted coffee beans transform into aromatic coffee beans? Even with in-house roasting using the same bean variety, why do different coffee shops produce completely different flavors?

FrontStreet Coffee, located in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, is one of the most renowned coffee shops in the Guangdong region. The current resident roaster is Mr. Liang Bin. Now, let's understand the logic behind FrontStreet Coffee's freshly roasted beans!

FrontStreet Coffee's Roasting Philosophy

In reality, coffee roasting has considerable flexibility, with many possible directions. For example, can Ethiopian Red Cherry be medium-dark roasted? Can Indonesian Golden Mandheling be lightly roasted? Of course, many people will experiment with these approaches, but FrontStreet Coffee will not.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe must first taste like Yirgacheffe, then everything else comes after. This is our roasting and shelving standard. On the other hand, coffee roasting also has uniqueness - each bean has a suitable roast degree. This "suitability" refers to the roasting result that allows drinkers to recognize that this bean has this specific flavor. Since drinkers already have this familiar recognition, in most cases, you can't simply roast however you want.

The Roasting Process

1. Bean Selection

To roast a great batch of beans, being meticulous about bean quality is essential. Before roasting, defective beans that affect roasting quality must be removed, including insect-damaged dead beans like black beans, broken beans, discolored beans, overly small or large beans, etc. The selection process can vary in length. Since concentrated attention is needed to pick out bad beans, this requires patience and sharp eyes!

2. Preparation Area

Due to FrontStreet Coffee's substantial customer orders for beans, roasting machines often run continuously all day. Multiple pre-ordered beans are waiting to be roasted, with constant orders from Taobao customers and numerous on-site purchases. Therefore, in the preparation area beside the roaster, selected beans rest peacefully, waiting for their transformation into bags of aromatic goodness.

3. Loading Beans

Time to start roasting! Preheat the roaster before loading beans, then pour the prepared beans into the roasting drum.

4. Heat Absorption

During this stage, beans begin to absorb heat. The duration of heat absorption varies slightly among different coffee shops and is considered part of the roaster's personal technique.

5. Ignition

After complete heat absorption, ignite to begin heating. During this period, heat must be increased to a certain level, directly related to adjusting the air damper. The intensity and duration of heat also vary among different roasters. The heat intensity and timing directly affect coffee flavor. Because coffee has numerous growing regions, each with different bean characteristics, achieving good-tasting coffee is absolutely related to the roaster's understanding of bean varieties and their characteristics.

6. Waiting for First Crack

During this stage, the roaster observes bean color through the sampling tryer at the front of the roaster, assessing the roast degree based on color. First crack occurs at approximately 200°C inside the drum - you'll know it by the sound. After hearing first crack, subtle heat adjustments must be made based on bean characteristics and moisture content of each batch.

7. Adjusting Air Damper (Smoke and Silver Skin Removal)

Coffee cherries are small, red, cherry-like fruits when ripe. After harvesting, the fruit pulp must be fermented and removed, revealing two facing green coffee beans. These beans have inner and outer seed coats - the outer is called parchment, which naturally falls off during roasting, while the inner is called silver skin, which also detaches and disperses during first crack. This stage's air damper adjustment is meant to expel parchment and some detached silver skin. If not removed, parchment overheating in the drum can produce undesirable smoky flavors that affect coffee taste.

8. Dropping Beans

The drop point is also related to the coffee bean's flavor characteristics and moisture content. FrontStreet Coffee's coffee roasting standards follow the eight major standards of the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America), the leading authority in the international coffee community. From light to dark, they are: Very Light, Light (used only for cupping, not general coffee), Moderately Light (obvious acidity, rarely used), Light Medium (M - mostly used for aromatic beans like Yirgacheffe, Guatemala's Huehuetenango, Costa Rica, Panama Geisha, etc.), Medium (M - Yunnan small bean coffee, Brazil, Colombia, Hawaii Kona, etc.), Moderately Dark (M+ - Mandheling, Honduras, Blue Mountain, etc.), Dark (D- - blended coffee beans), Very Dark (D - espresso).

Under Master Liang's skilled hands, fragrant coffee beans emerge from the roaster! When beans drop onto the cooling tray, the crisp, pleasant sound of beans striking the metal is like coffee beans celebrating their complete life transformation.

9. Cooling

After dropping and before bagging, hot coffee beans must cool down on the cooling tray. Usually, coffee beans still have residual heat internally after roasting, which can cause the roast degree to become darker and affect overall coffee taste. Therefore, rapid and even temperature reduction is necessary.

10. Final Bean Selection

Although beans were selected before roasting, broken coffee beans may still appear during the roasting process and need to be hand-selected again at this stage. Unafraid of time consumption, FrontStreet Coffee insists on carefully selecting good coffee to present to customers - this is FrontStreet Coffee's commitment.

Variables Affecting Coffee Roasting

Differences among each coffee shop: habits regarding heat intensity, airflow, drop point, batch size, green bean freshness, and other variables all affect the final result.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473