Stumptown Coffee, an invention of Portland-based third-wave coffee, truly treats roasting coffee as an art. Having roasteries in Seattle, Brooklyn, and Portland, they’ve won the hearts of coffee connoisseurs around the U.S. showing them exactly what they’ve been missing. Thinking Cup, currently with three coffee shops in Boston city was the first to bring Stumptown Coffee to Boston. Curious to know the process involved in roasting Stumptown’s exceptional coffee? Here are the steps;
First, the coffee is scooped into a bucket on a scale so that the quantity of coffee being roasted is known. It is then poured into the loader, which is a new machine. Vintage machines which have been modernized are other types of machines used by Stumptown Coffee roasteries.
The machine must be warmed up just before usage to avoid hot or color spots. A vacuum is created, and its function is to move the coffee and warm it to the appropriate temperature for that particular coffee. The flame is adjusted during the roasting process. It must be taken into consideration that the overall temperature is dropped when the cold beans are introduced to the warmth of the drum. Additionally, bean thicknesses come into play as well. Those grown at higher altitudes tend to mature more slowly and therefore be less dense, while those at low altitudes are more delicate.
Once there’s an equal degree of heat, the temperature is raised to the full temperature needed. Roast logs are kept by Stumptown Coffee to ensure consistency in quality. All 3 of Stumptown Coffee’s roasteries keep logs and exchange feedback after sending samples to the main company roaster and quality control head in Portland. This ensures consistency not just within each roaster, but across the board.
The average roasting time is between 11 to 15 minutes, depending on the coffee and the desired result. Once this step is completed, the flame is reduced, and the coffee moves on to the “crack” phase. After the crack dies away more heat is applied to achieve the desired product.
Once the heating process has been completed, the drum is opened up, and the contents are emptied onto a cooling tray. The reason is to stop the cooking immediately so that it doesn’t continue beyond the desired point. A fan cools the batch from below. Once the batch has cooled, it is transferred to a machine that removes stone “de-stoner” to prevent any foreign materials (such as stones or twigs) from moving in with the beans on to consumers since coffee is an agricultural product.
Although this is only a part of the process a bean undergoes when it travels from farmer to consumer through Stumptown Coffee, it, however, demonstrates how much they value the quality of their end product.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of savoring Stumptown Coffee, then visit any of Thinking Cup’s 3 coffee shops in Boston for a cup of coffee experience that has been rated among those that are second to none in the U.S.