Coffee quality control at Colombia Coffee Roasters
Within specialty coffee, we are always looking for ways to improve and roast the perfect coffees for our guests to experience. A part of these efforts includes continuously improving our quality control efforts. By working with producers in origin, our team at the roastery, and our team at our cafes, we strive to maximize our quality control efforts at every part of the supply chain. In doing so, we maintain and pursue more transparency and traceability with our products. Continue reading to learn more about our quality control at every part of the supply chain.
Origin Practices
Quality control at origin with our producing partners goes deep and to the seed. Normally, we make an effort to visit origin during every harvest but due to the current pandemic, we are not able to. Our producers work with agronomists to ensure seeds are purchased properly, planted in the nursery that ensures proper health, and planted in the farm to maximize their potential growth and health. They work to maintain healthy vegetation that surrounds their coffees and ensure the proper fertilizers are used to maximize the varieties health and cup potential.
Once harvested, our producers train and work with other farmers/coffee pickers to ensure each coffee's hand-picked at its optimal time. After picked, each coffee goes through a meticulous and rigorous process of sorting, processing, fermenting, and washing. Each of these steps ensures that the most flavor is brought out of the coffee cherry. Once dried, another meticulous and rigorous sorting process is done in green form to remove any last minute defects prior to export.
Cupping Protocol
Cupping is a crucial step to our quality control. While multiple evaluation cuppings happen in origin prior to export, we continuously cup our coffees immediately upon arrival and prior to every roast batch to ensure our coffees are consistent in quality. This is important to continue to provide feedback to our producers and to do our best to evaluate the best production roast. First and foremost, it must be clear that we follow strict Specialty Coffee Association cupping protocol to ensure every step is clear and understood. During cuppings, we understand each bean and find aromas/flavor notes that shine so that we understand how to bring out these notes during our production roasts.
Roastery Quality Control
Pre-production roast, we finalize roasting data so we can perfect each batch. During production roast, we continuously monitor heat levels and timing to ensure the most even and best roast. Post-production roast, we do final cuppings to ensure the coffees are accurately represented and of high-quality before they reach our cafes and/or our customer’s homes.
Cafe Quality Control
Our final step of quality control happens in our cafe. At this point we are confident and certain our coffees are roasted to perfection. However, we take this step to ensure that our coffees are properly brewed and extracted properly. Not only that, but we also take time to find the subtleties in each craft drink and try to develop the best craft drinks that taste amazing but also represent our coffees to perfection. Whether it be the milk we steam or the cups into which we pour, every detail matters at our cafes.
While quality control is never ending and is always being improved, we hope this gives some insight into our transparent and traceable methodology of our quality control. Be sure to check out our coffees to experience the final results of some beautiful coffees!
