When it comes to roasting coffee specifically intended for espresso, there are so many different factors to consider that it’s a bit like an engineering design project (minus the technical drawings). The approach taken with Lusty Glaze was to decide on a style and taste as the goal, and then work back by finding the coffee beans and roast profile that could deliver this. So when a customer asked if we could roast coffee to use as their unique espresso, it was the perfect excuse for a new design project. Our ‘design for life’ project is in its early stages, so we thought it would be a good idea to chart the whole process via The Blog.
Like any good design project, it’s first necessary to deconstruct the end product and consider each component part. Antonio Gaudi said: “originality consists in returning to the origin”. This had absolutely nothing to do with coffee because Gaudi was an architect – though being a bit of a genius, perhaps he enjoyed a good brew and foresaw the Third Wave of coffee! It happens to be our project starting point: returning to the origin in coffee terms means considering what beans we’re going to use, and whether we actually need to blend at all to create the perfect espresso. How about using a single-origin, or even better, a single-estate bean? Isn’t blending coffee what used to be required when high-quality coffee beans were lacking? Our next blog post will cover our findings. In the meantime, we’ve got new green beans to source…
