Get to Know the Types of Coffee Roasts

The flavor, aroma, and color of the coffee will vary depending on the type of roasting. 

Did you know there are several factors that can determine the taste and aroma of your favorite coffee? One of the most important is roasting, an art that experts may take years to perfect, but once mastered, it provides several specific flavors and qualities to your favorite drink. These characteristics will depend on the type of coffee roast and the technique of the master roaster. But how complicated can it be to roast a coffee and select a color? In fact, it’s more complicated than it seems, because each type of coffee has a specific taste, aroma, acidity, and bitterness that is given at this stage of coffee production.

Knowing the types of coffee roasts

The difference between a good roast and a ruined product is time. During this process, every minute and second counts. It’s always necessary to consider that, depending on the method used by a roaster, the changes in color and stages may take more or less time.

Once you understand these factors that influence the quality of roasting, you should also keep in mind that the coffee industry doesn’t have standardized names and phase descriptions. Each company can have its own classification, although a simple measure that is often used, is one that defines four states: light roast, medium roast, medium-dark roast, and dark roast. Within these categories, small subdivisions with small variations in color and taste can also be found.

Light Roast

This type of roasting is characterized by colors ranging from pale orange to light brown. In general, the beans that are still in this stage have a grainy flavor and retain a higher percentage of acidity, caffeine and origin flavors. In the darker roasts of this stage, the “first crack” is usually heard. From this moment on, the coffee is more suitable for consumption.

Usually, the light roast category includes light City, Half City, and Cinnamon Roasts, in which the bean is roasted until before the first crack. Also in the category is the so-called New England Roast, in which the bean is roasted until the first crack.

Medium Roast

The colors in this category are mostly light and medium brown. As with light roast, the coffee beans don’t have any oil on the surface; however, their taste is more roasted and less grainy, and they have less acidity. Also, their caffeine level has decreased slightly, flavors are more balanced and have more body.

As part of this stage, some experts usually mention the City and Breakfast Roast, and the American Roast, a very common roast throughout the United States.

Medium Dark Roast

This type of roasting has a darker color and provides a bitterer flavor to the bean. At this stage, oils begin to appear on the surface of the seeds. The coffee that this type of roasting provides has more body than it’s given by the light and medium roast.

In this category, there are the so-called Full City and Vienna Roasts, characterized for being roasted until hearing the second crack.

Dark Roast

In this category, the color of the roast is dark brown and almost black. On the surface of the coffee bean, you can see the oils. The bitter and smoky taste predominates over the original flavors, and the levels of caffeine and acidity are lower than those of the other roasts.

This state includes the so-called High, Continental, French, New Orleans, European and Espresso Roasts. A wide variety of names and roasts, don’t you think?

With this introduction to the world of roasting, you’ll be able to identify more clearly which product might be the best for you or your customers. Remember that if you want to open a business in which main product is coffee, you must know how to identify the needs and tastes of your clients in order to offer them the right type of coffee roast.

If you want to know the variety of products that the different roasts can produce, look for us on our social networks as That Coffee Roasters and discover much more about your favorite coffee!

If you want to get into the coffee business, you must know the best roast!

That Coffee Roasters

Phone Number: (305) 821-8811

2697 W. 76 Street, Hialeah, Florida 33016

Facebook: That Coffee Roasters

Instagram: thatcoffeeroasters

Coffee as They Drink It in Latin America

In Colombia, coffee is made with agua de panela.

From Mexico to Argentina, Latin America is a region full of great coffee and creative people. No matter where we are, we have our unique way to do even the most common activities. Our coffee is famous, so we take it seriously. Very seriously. And by ‘seriously,’ we mean that coffee is the perfect excuse to have fun and share the best moments with the people we love the most.

There is no “Latin American” method to brew coffee. Our cultural diversity makes it impossible to pick simply one. That’s the reason why, today, we’re going to explore some of the most popular ways of enjoying our favorite drink all across the continent. If you’re a fan of the flavors of Latin American coffee, live the whole experience by trying these recipes!

Costa Rica: Café chorreado

Careful planting, harvesting, and processing characterize Costa Rica’s coffee culture. In the final part of the process, Ticos brew coffee with a chorreador, a wooden tool that holds a filter made of cotton. Café chorreado is part of a tradition that goes back to many generations. Everyone learned it from their grandparents and continued brewing coffee like this today.

According to Costa Ricans, café chorreado has deep flavors and aromas.  To brew a chorreado, we need to preheat the chorreador and measure how much coffee and water we’re going to use. We then put the coffee in the cotton filter and start dampening it with hot water. We continue to pour the water slowly, with patience, and we never let it fill the filter all the way to the top. When it’s done, we don’t let the filter dripping, but put it away and clean it thoroughly. And there we have it! Our very own café chorreado.

Argentina: café cortado and lágrima

In the city of Buenos Aires, you’ll never walk for three blocks without finding a new café. For Argentinians, stopping to drink a cup of coffee in the middle of the day, whether it’s to enjoy it alone or with friends, is part of their coffee culture and traditions.

The most famous ways to brew coffee are café cortado and lágrima. To prepare a cortado, you need to use a proportion of ¾ of coffee for ¼ of milk, and add a fine layer of foam on the surface. It’s the most popular way to have coffee in Buenos Aires.

When it comes to the lágrima, we talk about a black coffee to which you only add a “tear” or a drop of milk. Just enough to change the color of the drink.

Cuba: sweet and strong

Cuban coffee is famous for its strong flavor and full body. To brew it, you’ll need to pour cold and clear water into the coffee maker. It’s important that the coffee is prepared with extremely clean water. Afterwards, introduce the coffee inside the filter and start heating it up.

Cuban coffee is very sweet. Sugar is one of the most important ingredients in the mix. As coffee starts to boil, add a small dose of sugar to the pot and start stirring. Once it has boiled, pour more sugar inside and stir until you get the thick and dense consistency that’s so traditional of Cuban coffee! An extra layer of foam on the surface of your drink at the end will do the final trick.

Colombia: Tinto

In Colombia, coffee means family. Their traditional ways of brewing coffee pass down from generation to generation and have stayed in the hearts of Colombian people for many years. Not everyone like Colombian tintos, though. Many coffee experts believe this brewing method is wrong and doesn’t bring the best out of the famously excellent Colombian coffee beans. We still encourage you to try it and decide on your own!

In order to brew a tinto, follow these instructions: Lit the fire and start boiling the water. Right before it’s boiled, add four tablespoons of ground coffee. In a separate pot, make agua de panela by adding unrefined sugarcane to boiling water. After three or four minutes, remove the coffee from the boil and add the sweet agua de panela. Focus on the flavors of the panela mixed with coffee and tell us how you like it! At That Coffee Roasters, we love to explore the different coffee nuances of every region. We know we’re not simply talking about a drink, but about a cultural experience that has been engraved in our traditions and families for centuries.

Cuban coffee is known for its sweet and strong flavors.

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That Coffee Roasters

Phone Number: (305) 821-8811

2697 W. 76 Street, Hialeah, Florida 33016

Facebook: That Coffee Roasters

Instagram: thatcoffeeroasters

Print Your Pictures in Latte Art with Edible Inks

Would you pay for it?

Are you a fan of latte art? Who isn’t nowadays? Having beautiful designs accompanying your cup of coffee is just so fun and pretty. They make some good Instagram material as well. It’s really cool to see all the baristas that put so much dedication into every cup of coffee they serve. But what if you could decide the exact design that you want on your drink? What if there were no limits to what you want your latte to reflect?

Now it’s possible. Thanks to 3D printing technology, you can have any pictures you want to be drawn on the surface of your cup of joe. If you’re a selfie addict, you can also have your own pictures on them as well, although that might be… a little narcissistic. But hey, you do you.

How does it work?

In only ten seconds you could have a highly detailed image on your latte. These machines combine 3D printing with an ink-jet system to create complex imagery. They use natural coffee extracts, called Ripple pods, to draw the pictures with different shades of brownish colors.

Through the Ripple app, you can choose from a gallery the design you wish to have on your cup. You can also select a picture from your own camera roll and pick anything, from inspirational messages to images of your loved ones or friends. After you’ve selected the image, it can be edited, scaled, filtered and even have text added to customize your latte art as much as you want to!

Steam CC, the company behind the printer, sells the product for $999, available to commercial establishments that sell coffee. It includes a Wi-Fi enabled device and hundreds of images to choose from, with new ones constantly being uploaded to the cloud. Artists can also submit their work for consideration! Typically, the system automatically adjusts all designs to a range of cups up to 7’ high and 4.5’ wide.

If you have the mobile Ripple app, you can find cafes within your zone that serve drinks with a Coffee Ripple printer and head there to pick your own creation.

If you have a restaurant or a coffee shop, these printers could be a really cool way to offer a unique experience to your customers and increase brand loyalty. Cafes are perfect places to hang out with friends, and people are always looking for things they can share and talk about with their loved ones. Giving your customers the option to customize their own products and even give them a sentimental value is a great example of an experience worth sharing with others!

So would you like to print your own pictures in your latte art? Even if you end up drinking it up, it can be really fun and cool way to surprise your friends and family. Tell us in the comments what you think and stay updated with our content by following us on That Coffee Roasters’ social media!

All you have to do is choose a picture.

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That Coffee Roasters

Phone Number: (305) 821-8811

2697 W. 76 Street, Hialeah, Florida 33016

Facebook: That Coffee Roasters

Instagram: thatcoffeeroasters

Cash-Free Coffee Shops: A New Trend?

There are a few cafés that have adopted this method.

Technology has been dictating the way we live ever since we can remember. It had going like this: we discovered how to make paper, and then paper money came along. And now we’ve discovered how to stop needing cash, so it’s only a matter of time until we get rid of it once and for all. At least that’s what some coffee shop owners believe and why they’ve transformed their shops into some of the first cash-free cafes in the world.

And it’s weird because cash actually comes in handy when buying a cup of coffee on your way to work, right? It’s a good use for that extra money that you have laying in your pockets or your purse, right? Well, maybe we should think about it more carefully because there are good reasons as to why some cafés in countries like Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom and Australia are only allowing plastic as a form of payment now.

Why should cafes go cashless?

One of the reasons is efficiency. As there is no need to waste time with cash, orders can be taken quickly, without having to worry about counting or giving change. Using debit and credit cards can keep things running faster and smoother. It makes a daily activity as streamlined as possible, and it avoids adding errors at the end of the day.

It can also be safer. Chip technology has made electronic money a lot safer than carrying a lot of cash around. If there’s a robbery, your money won’t be at risk, and you won’t need to go to the bank with thousands of dollars on you.

It’s true that baristas and coffee shop workers won’t get tips anymore with this method, but you can raise their wages with the money you’d be saving yourself since bank deposit fees and staff cashing up would no longer be a problem.

If, in addition, you establish a method of payment where customers can order their own drinks without having to go to the cashier, you’ll be saving them time as well. Besides, it also gives workers a better way to run the coffee shop, since they’re not bound to walk to or stay at a certain point to take an order.

How can it impact revenue for coffee shops?

Making the best use of time, especially at busy hours, means you can serve more customers, which subsequently means your business will be making more money. However, not all people are ready to take the final step to a cashless world, and most coffee shop owners admit switching to a cash-free type of business has made them lost a few clients.

Nevertheless, they insist that it hasn’t really impacted their finances because tap-and-go card payments make things much more efficient and quicker. Besides, they believe that cashless economy will be eventually inevitable. They’re just doing it first. With time, people will come along.

What about you? Would you rather your favorite cafe to simply let you order your drink and make the payment by yourself? Would you like to be free from the need to carry cash with you at all times? Whether we like it or not, it seems that’s the road technology and humanity are taking! It’s alright, as long as our cups of joe are as good as That Coffee Roasters’ coffee, it should all be worth it.

Would you ban cash from your shop?

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That Coffee Roasters

Phone Number: (305) 821-8811

2697 W. 76 Street, Hialeah, Florida 33016

Facebook: That Coffee Roasters

Instagram: thatcoffeeroasters

Alan Adler: The Inventor of the AeroPress Coffee Machine

How do these coffee machines work?

If you’ve ever looked for the best coffee makers to have in your home so you can brew the daily cup of joe that wakes you up every morning, chances are you’ve heard of the AeroPress, or you might have one in your kitchen. But what’s an AeroPress in any case? It’s a device for brewing coffee that was invented back in 2005 by an engineer called Alan Adler. In these coffee machines, the coffee is steeped for 10–50 seconds and then forced through a filter by pressing the plunger through the tube. The final result is a delicious espresso-like coffee thanks to which the AeroPress has become one of the favorite brewers among coffee lovers.

And it’s all thanks to its inventor. AeroPress machines are simple to use, easy to clean and let you regulate the amount of pressure you put into your coffee brew so you can finish the whole process in less than a minute. Nowadays, people use their AeroPress however they prefer, and there are even competitions especially dedicated to this style of brewing.

How did the AeroPress come to be?

Adler is convinced that most of the time, inventions work when you think of a new way to improve something that already exists. Before the AeroPress, coffee brewing could take around five minutes to complete, and there was no way to actually make a drink as strong as espresso without an espresso machine. About home espresso machines, he says: “There’s no way to adjust the temperature, and it was that problem that led me to start designing my own coffee maker. Because I wanted the freedom to use whatever temperature tasted best, and I didn’t have that freedom with a home espresso machine or with an automatic drip machine.”

At the same time, Adler found out about the benefits of brewing coffee at lower temperatures and decided to create a machine that would allow him to make a single shot for himself at home. He realized a closed chamber that he could pressurize to speed up the process was what he needed, and so he started to work on a prototype in his store and that’s how the first concepts of the AeroPress were born.

A machine that inspired competitions

One thing that’s absolutely great and unique about AeroPress machines is their versatility. It allows you to experiment and create your own personalized ways of brewing your coffee. You can find many different videos on YouTube of people using non-traditional methods to reinvent their drink with the AeroPress. It has even inspired the World AeroPress Championship in which baristas get ready to innovate and try to make the perfect cup of coffee.

However, Adler never saw the competitions coming. In an interview with Sprudge, he explained “Not in my wildest fantasy dreams did I ever consider that (...) When I reflect on it now, the AeroPress really is a perfect thing for a competition because it’s so flexible. It encourages innovation. You couldn’t really have that with an ordinary espresso machine because it’s pretty set with how it works–but the AeroPress, there’s just an unlimited amount of ways you can use it.”

The original recipe

If we go back to the origins of the AeroPress though, we’ll find that Alan Adler experimented quite a lot before coming up with the final AeroPress machine and the recipe that worked best for him. It stands out for its simplicity. If you want to brew your coffee just like the inventor of the AeroPress, all you’ll need will be your vessel, your coffee, and water. First, follow these recommendations:

• The coffee should be of espresso-like grind size.
• Water should sit at 80℃–85℃ temperature. 80℃ for medium to dark roast, 85℃ for lighter roasts.

Then, for the less-than-one-minute brewing process, follow these steps:

1. Place the filter in the filter basket.
2. Screw the basket onto the AeroPress.
3. Sit the AeroPress on top of a decanter or a mug.
4. Put one scoop of coffee in. That equals about 15 grams of coffee.
5. Add water up to the #1 mark. It should be about 85–90ml.
6. Stir the coffee well for about ten seconds, making sure all grounds are wet.
7. Connect the plunger at the top of the vessel.
8. Press the plunger down for about 20–60 seconds, depending on the pressure. It’s recommended to simply put your hands on top of the plunger and let them push the plunger with their natural weight.
9. The result of this recipe is a coffee concentrate. Add hot water based on your taste preference.
10. To clean the brewer, remove the cap, throw away the coffee grounds, and wash your brewer.

Are you ready to brew your coffee Alan Adler’s style? AeroPress is very simple and fun to use! Besides, its practicality makes it the perfect coffee maker to take on a trip or quickly prepare a single shot. Our espresso ground coffee selection is great to try with AeroPress machines, so head to That Coffee Roasters’ online store and prepare to have the most amazing cup of coffee of your life!

Brew strong coffee with them.

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That Coffee Roasters

Phone Number: (305) 821-8811

2697 W. 76 Street, Hialeah, Florida 33016

Facebook: That Coffee Roasters

Instagram: thatcoffeeroasters