Entry 15 Learning to Profile Roast Coffee

Road Trip!

​One would assume that somebody starting a coffee roastery and café would be fairly involved in coffee, likely spending years in the trade growing their skill set, knowledge, and overall understanding of the industry. My coffee background differs entirely in that it is not only limited but also truly lies at the bottom end of quality regarding consumption. The majority of coffee I have enjoyed has been poured from a gas station, bush camp, or fast-food franchise. I have never worked in a café or coffee roastery and have really only been drinking coffee for a few years. So what is my motive for pursuing a coffee company? Well simply put, I figure that if I can be this passionate about the bad coffee I have consumed over the years, think of what I could do with GREAT coffee! 
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​Due to my overall lack of experience in pretty well all aspects of this line of work, I decided it would behove me to take some courses and get educated. However, due to my already tight build timeline for the bus, I would not be able to take all the courses I’d like to at once or even in the same year. So, I decided to start with three-day Diedrich Coffee Profiling Course offered right there at the Diedrich Roasters production facility in Sandpoint, Idaho. Luckily the course lined up perfectly with when my IR 2.5 Diedrich Roaster would be available, so I could save a little on shipping and drive my roaster over the boarder myself. ​

​When I arrived in Sandpoint one thing became very apparent, people LOVE coffee there. The number of independent coffee shops and complete lack of franchise coffee absolutely blew me away. I could not believe that just a few hours south of the boarder there could be such a dramatic change in coffee culture. One resident of Sandpoint told me there was 50 independent coffee shops in and around Sandpoint, a resort town of just 7,000 permanent residents. Compare that to Whistler, Canada’s premier resort town with 12,000 residents that has less than 20 coffee shops total, the majority of which are Tim Hortons and Starbucks locations. Needless to say, taking a coffee profiling course in a town with such a strong coffee culture really solidified the experience. 

​As far as Diedrich’s Coffee Profile Course went, I couldn’t think of a better way to enter the industry. Everybody at the company was so inviting and supportive on all aspects from coffee roasting itself to overall entrepreneurship and running a small business. The first day of the course really starts with a wide scope covering everything about green coffee and understanding all its variables, working with an exporter/importer, heat transfer in a Diedrich Roaster, and sample theory. The second day the focus is on profiling, roasting to multiple colours, choosing a colour then changing the amount of time to get to that end colour. The second day also hosts a plant tour of the Diedrich facility itself, allowing you to see how the roasters are built from the ground up and the care that goes into them. I found the plant tour to be extremely beneficial in quenching my curiosities as large portions of the roaster you never see inside, and to be able to see their production gives a better understanding of what exactly is going on inside the roaster. On day three the focus is on how and when heat is applied to the roast, and what the outcome of these different applications are. 

Throughout the three days you are continuously cupping the coffee you roasted to identify the differences and improvements throughout the day to day advancements. Although you do a lot of cupping in the course, it is a serious skill, one that I will need to continue to pursue to pick up sodalities in flavour. However, even at my novice level I was able to decipher that this cup does taste different or better than that cup. Although cupping can be quite frustrating at times due huge amount of caffeine ingested by the process, it is really the wake up call that the same coffee bean roasted in different manners can taste hugely different. Prior to taking the Profiling Course I had an idea that you could alter the flavour through the roast process, but I had no idea the degree of control you have over the end products flavour if you have the right education and skill set.

​With the Profiling course completed I headed back to Canada to install my new roaster, and see what aspects of the course stuck and which will need to be reinforced! In the future I will need to seek out opportunities to sit in on other roaster's processes, take some more cupping specific courses, and at some point take some basic business courses cause at this point I am simply winging it!