Brew
A Perfect Cup at Home
This guide, created by Kopplin’s owner Andrew Kopplin, will help you master
the art of brewing the perfect cup. Read more
America's Coolest CoffeeHouses
Kopplin's rated one of America's Coolest Coffeehouses in Travel & Leisure for using local vendors and supporting local community. Read more
Symphony
in a Cup
Local high-end coffee brewers will make you rethink the contents of your mug. Read more
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Good Taste QUarterly
Find out why coffee and espresso taste better drinking from a porcelain
cup, how roasting and light roast beans make
a difference and get info about Kopplin's specials. Read more
Once the coffee has made the journey to the consuming country (in our case the
United States), it needs to be roasted. Roasting is a both a simple and complex
process. In essence it’s just application of heat to the beans, however,
to roast and preserve the subtle and complex terroir characteristics is a life-long
journey of discovery and perfecting.
The science of roasting is one of applying high heat (between 365 and 465 degrees
Fahrenheit) to the beans, which causes the sugars to combine with the amino acids,
peptides and proteins. This causes a caramelization process known a Mailard’s
reaction, which produces glycosylamine and melanoidins (brown, bittersweet compounds)
and carbon dioxide.
The reactions caused by roast take the green coffee, which has approximately
250 volatile aromatic compounds, to roasted coffee, which has over 800. The subtle
variations in the way it reaches its final roasted state can lead to vastly different
results in the flavor as it creates and destroys these sometimes fragile compounds.
A “perfect” roast should just develop all of these compounds without
overwhelming any of the bean with off “roast” flavors. This means
that quality coffee should not be darkly roasted as the result is simply bitter
carbon compounds. In fact, over roasting is one the major reasons the consuming
public has come to associate coffee with a bitter flavor. Quality coffee roasted
lightly (but not too lightly) is sweet, acidic, and complex.
