Learning how to roast coffee: SCA roasting intermediate course with Firedancer
Want to learn how to roast coffee? Here’s what a five-day roasting course looks like at Firedancer Coffee Consultants.
Day 1: green coffee selection. Brewed coffee is only as good as how it’s grown. Learning how to spot quality defects is foundational before roasting anything.
Day 2: sensory. The fun part: tasting coffee. Firedancer had some great training exercises to improve sensory skills, and you can train your palate surprisingly fast. After a day, we could blindly detect differences in body, acidity, and flavor.
Day 3-5: roasting. We worked on a proper roaster, a Diedrich IR5. Roasting coffee is HARD. A batch take 10-12 minutes, but a 10-minute batch ending at 400 degrees is very different from an 11-minute batch ending at 420. Yet, the roaster input between those batches is very small. We had to learn how to drive this thing.
The first batches were…mixed. This is where sensory is important. Does it taste roasted, yet acidic? We probably scorched the beans, and the roast was too short. We logged everything by hand for review (old school).
By day 5, the results got very consistent. We got comfortable on the Diedrich and the last three batches all the same, which means we passed the course.
The best part was meeting other roasters. Farm Loop Coffee Anticonquista Cafe are passionate small business owners in specialty coffee (check out their coffee!).
What next? A Diedrich IR-12 for Craft Coffee Spot? TBD. All I know is our content will get A LOT better from what I learned. An espresso machine teaches you things, but roasting is another level. Looking forward to sharing more and maybe selling our own coffee soon :)
Big thanks to John, Mike, and Renee at @fdcceducation. They were great instructors!
https://craftcoffeespot.com/
https://www.farmloopcoffee.com/
https://www.anticonquistacafe.com/
https://www.firedancercoffee.com/
#specialtycoffee #coffeenerd #coffeeroasting #roastcoffee