Coffee Roasting Basics Course with Café Sublime
Learning How to Roast Coffee from True Professionals
In Guadalajara lies a wealth of Mexican history and culture. The creation of mariachi music, the origin of tequila just a short ride away, and also home to Café Sublime/Café Estelar ( estelar.coffee), a group that runs a selection of the finest coffee shops in the city. I participated in their Coffee Roasting Basics course taught by Jorge Sotomayor ( jorgesot) and Fabrizio Sención ( fabrizioseed), and let me tell you, it sure was an eye opener.
For 6 years, I had been roasting my own coffee with a Sonofresco profile roaster that uses hot air to roast the beans in small batches. It is as easy as “set it and forget it” with just a power switch, gas switch and roast level from 1-9, if you prefer an easy machine to roast coffee at home as a hobby, or a way to save time or do other things while you save money home roasting, without the risk of burning your batch. There is nothing wrong with that and it is a solid small machine for exactly that reason. It does have the ability to connect to a computer and provide all of the important details, but I was not using it that way. I would set my ideal roast level and then watch and listen for first crack, and was able to get good results, but the finer details of the roasting process were not in my head yet.
Let’s just say that Café Sublime’s roasting basics course changed all of that.
Of course as with anything related to food or drink, the most essential detail that influences the taste of the final product will always be the raw materials. In the case of coffee, that obviously means the quality of the coffee bean, the cultivation of its cherry within its particular environment, and the chosen process of removing the bean from the cherry.
Café Sublime only works with the highest quality coffee beans, with zero defects, all sourced from producers in Mexico itself. With the right care by the fincas in cultivation and Café Sublime’s attention to detail, every batch they roast is exceptional. Their self-imposed high standards are what set them apart from other roasters.
Here I’ll leave out the finer details, which you should really learn for yourself through one of Café Sublime’s courses (if you speak Spanish), but here are some highlights of what I learned about in the 3 day Basics of Roasting Coffee course.
Coffee Roasting at its Finest
3 Days, Way More Than 3 Learnings
1. Coffee History
From the discovery of the plant, to the opening of the first coffee shop in the world, Jorge walked us through the generations of coffee production on the planet, and then more specifically delved into its arrival and spread in Mexico. A fascinating story, and one you should hear straight from Jorge. The history of roasting was just as intriguing, with every possible heat source used at one point or another. After waves of innovations and refinements, the industry harnessed thermodynamics to take the raw material and turn it into what we know and love today.
2. Rating Beans
The selection and understanding of the coffee bean is so complex that I will barely scratch the surface here, but this course went through the following details:
- Temperature
- Nutrition of soil
- Coffee bean density & associated heat requirements
- Humidity
- Post-harvest processing
- Fermentation
- Defects
3. Sensorial Evaluation
Scent is of course an essential aspect of coffee and along with the scientific details below, is a something to zero in on while roasting and also while cupping to evaluate the final product. For that reason, we took some time to smell extracts of various natural foods in a blind test to see how well we could perceive scent profiles. This certainly came in handy when we eventually cupped various coffees.
4. The Science of Coffee Roasting
Thermodynamics, physics, chemical properties. They all factor into what makes each and every cup of coffee taste unique (or the same). Without understanding these details of the process, you cannot expect to roast consistently or successfully nail that perfect flavor profile you’ve been targeting.
5. Coffee Roasting Itself
After learning about the Rate of Rise (how many degrees the bean temperature rises in 1 minute), how to adjust based on the RoR, watching for the turning point in temperature, the stages of a roast and changes, and taking notes throughout, and even all the different types of roasters, it is no surprise that coffee roasting is an art as well as a science.
6. Cupping & Coffee Evaluation
The final piece of the Coffee Roasting Basics course was to evaluate the beans we had all roasted individually, as well as the same bean across many different roasting methods, along with deliberate “failed” roasts, all in the name of experimentation and understanding the process better. Through a blind cupping of all 12 roasts, we caffeinated ourselves to the max and learned a lot about how each different type of roast resulted in a completely different cup of coffee. Evaluation is crucial and something to always be practicing.
Learn more about coffee in GDL with the Guadalajara episode and while you’re at it, read more about traveling to Guadalajara.
For more about Café Sublime’s coffee courses, check out my articles on the Coffee Roasting Advanced course and Espresso Fundamentals course.
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