At Horsham Coffee Roaster we believe that coffee roasting is not a dark art. It doesn't require membership to a secret society or decades of slaving away behind an old restored 1960's roaster. It's actually a very scientific process and we aim to bring together science with the sensory skills needed to roast coffee to show off the intended flavours.
We roast all our coffee on our Loring S35. Our roasting style is light yet well developed. Under-roasted/underdeveloped coffee is not an enjoyable experience. It doesn't taste great, damages grinder burrs and is very tough for baristas to properly extract. We use both the roast profile software built into the Loring system and Cropster to help us to log, analyse and roast our coffee to the same high standard time and time again.
Loring make the worlds most advanced coffee roasters. The roasters are designed to give the user precise control over the roaster combined with reducing emissions. The Loring features a single burner system and we have noticed a 60% reduction in our gas usage (and CO2 emissions) compared to our previous traditional drum roaster. You can read more about Loring roasters on their website.
To assess roasted coffee development we use a VST refractometer to measure extractions and solubility and to asses roast colour we use a Lighttells CM-100 colour meter. We cup and evaluate all our coffees on a regular basis always ensuring we work hard to get the best flavours out of the coffee.
There are many excellent resources on coffee roasting available on the internet. If you'd like to read a bit more we'd suggest the following really great articles:
A bit here from Cropster and the excellent book by Scott Rao.
A great blog post from Heart Roasters about solubility and their withdrawal of the espresso roast.
We don't roast for filter and for espresso. Rather we test roast new coffees and cup them to select the profile that we believe works best for that particular coffee. At times this can be challenging but we work very hard to find the ideal roast development that will allow our coffees to shine through any brew method. In addition to cupping we regularly test our coffees using various filter and immersion brew methods as well as espresso.
For this reason there are certain coffees that might better suit espresso extraction and this very much depends on the equipment in use and the skills of the barista making the coffee. Our Workhorse and Nova blends have been roasted for easy espresso extraction and to tame some acidity making these ideal coffees to serve with milk or for customers who prefer coffee without milk but enjoy rich body, sweetness and lower acidity.
We are always happy to provide advice and recommendations. Please feel free to reach out to us at info@horshamcoffeeroaster.com
