|
About the Roastmaster
Chris, the Roastmaster, lives and breathes coffee. When he's not traveling the coffee-growing regions of the world to select the finest crops to import, he's researching, roasting, blending and cupping to insure you the best possible coffee experience with every cup of Joffrey's coffee.
Chris began roasting coffee 18 years ago, and it has been his passion ever since. He personally approves each and every crop selected for import and supervises the entire roasting process. He and his staff roast by hand, in small batches, for full control over the roasting process. This gives you the maximum flavor and aroma.
Joffrey's exceptional quality begins long before the coffee reaches our facility. The roastmaster visits coffee plantations and family farms around the world each year, searching for the finest crop offerings available. Chris hikes out to the fields and hillsides where the coffee trees are grown to assess the growing conditions, the health of the trees, and the harvesting methods used. He then follows the cherries through the cleaning, drying, and hulling process to evaluate the quality of the final green coffee beans.
Finally, he selects only the best of the best to bring home where the Joffrey's team gets to work.
First, the incoming beans are inspected to make sure that the coffee which arrives at our processing facility is of the same quality as the coffee Chris has chosen out in the field and that no damage has occurred during its voyage. A sample of each shipment is roasted and cupped to ensure consistent flavor.
Next the beans carefully hand-roasted in small batches, each tended personally by the Roastmaster or one of his assistants. Chris experiments to find the optimal roast for each coffee.
"Nobody knows everything," he says, "We all learn something new every day." Chris learns his art from the coffee itself, continually adjusting roasts and blends to make the most of each and every bean.
When they have reached the perfect shade of brown, the roasted coffee is transferred into the cooling tray to ensure an even finish. While the roasting itself is finished, Chris's work is not yet done. Once cool, the coffee is sent to the packaging room to be sealed in bags with one-way gas valves. These purge the reamining oxygen, preserving the fresh-roasted coffee in its own natural gases for maximum flavor and freshness.
Joffrey's specialty blended coffees begin with a target flavor profile in the Roastmaster's mind. As an artist adds paint to a blank canvas, Chris adds beans from various coffee origins to complete the flavor picture. He then experiments to find the optimal roast point and blending technique. Some coffees are blended before roasting, some afterwards, to create the final blend. Once the basic blend has been formulated, it is continually monitored and adjusted to maintain consistent flavor quality through seasonal and availability changes in the component coffees.
Joffrey's Coffee
All coffees begin with the coffee tree, a plant which grows in tropical regions around the world. Coffee trees produce their first crop when they are mature at around five years old, and each tree can produce one and a half to two pounds of roasted coffee each year.
Coffee is one of the most actively traded commodities in the world, second only to oil.Coffee is one of the few crops that small farmers can profitably export. When you hear news about the wholesale price of coffee going down, it's not necessarily good news. When prices drop too low, many farmers pull up their coffee trees and switch to bananas or other cash crops.
Joffrey's is committed to paying fair prices for all of our coffees. We want to encourage future production of high-quality coffee by helping farmers to profit from their coffee trade. We have long-standing relationships with growers of the best coffee beans available. We are willing to pay a premium to ensure that we have continual access to a consistently superior crop each year.
Coffee beans lose about 15% of their weight as moisture is eliminated during the roasting process.Our Roastmaster, with 18 years experience in his craft, visits many of these farms in person each year. After selecting the best beans from the finest crop offerings, the Roastmaster himself supervises the processing throughout the roasting, cooling, blending, and packaging phases. Joffrey's coffee is hand-roasted in small batches for optimal control, bringing out the best flavor, aroma, and body each variety has to offer. Each batch is then packaged, sealed, and shipped within 48 hours of roasting. With all the care we take in producing our fine gourmet coffees, you will see, smell, and taste the Joffrey's difference!
We invite you to share in our love of freshly roasted coffee, indulge in our variety of roast profiles and our famous espresso blends. Our origin coffees and blends have subtle nuances and characteristics rarely found in other brands. You will appreciate the extra effort, the dedication, and the passion that goes into bringing you some of the finest coffees in the world.
|
