Our Roast at Rowster

There are a lot of great coffee roasters out there. Some of the best are producing less than 100 pounds per month.  Other greats are cranking out thousands of pounds per day.  There are many types of roasting machines—converted popcorn poppers, sample roasters, fluid air bed roasters, drum roasters, shop roasters, industrial behemoths that fill up entire buildings.  Some are old and have been patched together but are still in operation after 50 years.  Some are new and have the latest technology—infrared, double walled chambers, computer controlled automation that dump the beans into the cooling pan at a pre-programmed temperature.

At Rowster we operate a work horse roaster that is bare bones so everything is done manually by using the 5 senses.  We listen for the sounds of first and second crack, the change in the percussion of the beans rolling inside the drum as the gas is turned up or down.  We smell the aroma as the bean releases its gasses—some invisible and some as wisps of white smoke.  We watch the chaff flow through the ducts and see the beans tumbling and slowly turning from green to yellow to tan to brown as the smoke starts to puff out of the exhaust vent.  You can touch the beans by pulling a few out at a time with the trier--a handled sampling device that catches the beans as they cascade over it.  And finally we taste them as roasters are known to do.  Maybe it’s not all that important but we like to occasionally chew on a freshly roasted bean---to feel the snap as it explodes between your teeth and experience the still developing flavors for the first time.  Finally, we cup every coffee at every roast profile to ensure that we are using the right degree of roast and the right progression of heat and temperature and timing to display what the humble bean from the hands of the humble farmer had worked so hard to produce. 

Many Specialty coffee roasters prefer—rather proudly at times--a lighter roast.  This allows the flavor of a great coffee to peak before the roaster irons out all the wrinkles and imparts its own unique “roast” flavor onto the bean.  Admittedly, an “Italian Roast” profile obliterates many of the nuances of the bean varietals, crop year, processing, altitude, region, and other origin characters.  But in the lexicon of coffee, ALL roast profiles have their place.  And a great coffee roasted to 460 degrees or more, is still a great coffee.  And sometimes, a coffee is just too wild, too untamed (as in the Papua New Guinea for me) for even a seasoned pro, and a dark roast works its magic.  Other times a coffee is so mild, so delicate and the flavor gets locked up and will not come out until you pour on the heat (as in our current crop of Mexican Altura).  Our job is to study and cup each and every roast profile and to choose the right one for each coffee throughout the year.  A coffee that arrives weeks after harvest may be best at a light roast only to lock up as it ages for several months until the next harvest.  We are constantly tinkering and trying new ways to make each coffee as good as it can be. 

Rowster does its best to provide you enough information to make the right decision for your taste.  Beneath each coffee listed on our “Menu”, there’s a link you can click on to learn more about the cup character and the story of the coffee from its origin to our roaster to your door.  We believe that coffee is not a destination.  We do not endeavor to gain uniformity or consistency in any of the coffee quality measurements—taste, aroma, body, acidity to name a few.  We chose the humble rowboat as our logo because we view coffee as a journey and we do it in small batches where we practice our craft alongside the farmer and the picker and the mill worker and the bagger.  At Rowster, coffee is a journey that started in Africa where the beans were first discovered in the Ethiopian Highlands by nomad farmers hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago.  We hope this journey will make its way to your cup. Each journey is different and unique just like each coffee, its origin, and time itself all impart their uniqueness to your experience