Specialty coffee isn’t just one thing. It’s the culmination of a few essential processes that all have to work in unison. In many cases, the term specialty coffee is pinned solely on green coffee and how it is grown and processed. However, if you only focus on green coffee, you’re missing many other important aspects of the production process.
When we talk about specialty coffee here at Path Coffee Roasters, we’re valuing the way we source our coffee, the profiling and roasting process, the hands-on packaging, and back-office operations. In many cases, the most important of them all is the service behind it. How do people feel about buying your coffee? Was the experience pleasurable or rough around the edges? Did the roaster uphold their end of the bargain?
At Path, we take our time looking for just the right coffee to put on our limited but diverse menu. We want each coffee to shine and speak to where it was cultivated. The terra of the region imparts so much into each bean, and when we find one that sines on the cupping table, we know it’s right. Our coffees are high grown and dried on raised beds or patios depending on the region. Altitude slows down the ripening process and makes the coffee sweeter and more distinct. A focus on quality processing gives you coffee that is cleaner in flavor and more uniform in screen size and appearance once roasted.
From day one, we’ve always focused on offering coffees that are unique and approachable. We want chuggable coffees and sipping coffees, but regardless, we want them to be fun to drink by all.
Profiling Your Roast Per Specialty Coffee
After finding a specialty coffee we love, we start profiling it on our production roaster. While roasting seems simple, small nuances in time and temperature affect the flavor. We aren’t just turning beans brown, we’re using our experience, palates, and Cropster curve to develop and then match each roast. Roasting “blind” has been the process since the beginning; however, once roast profiling software like Cropster became available, professional roasters now see each coffee’s actual time and temperature curve. We use that to profile a coffee for its optimal taste.
Profiling can be ongoing or straightforward. Depending on the specialty coffee, we might already have a proven curve that works just great with minor tweaks. For instance, if we go from one Guatemalan coffee to another, as long as they are both washed coffees, we should achieve a wonderful flavor using the other’s profile. Our goal with roasting is to expose the sweet, balanced flavors locked inside the green coffee. We can bring out the best in each coffee through a careful balance of time, temperature, and an ever descending ROR curve. By roasting the way we do, our coffees are rich, flavorful, and easier to extract than others.
Packaging & Order Fulfillment
Packaging and order fulfillment becomes our priority after roasting. Using sophisticated software like ShipStation, we can easily manage all incoming orders from each partner brand and process them quickly. The service we’ve created is another added feature of our “specialty coffee” program at Path. Creating a stress-free experience for our partners means they have more time to spend marketing and selling. Our reputation is critical, so we do everything we can to exceed your expectations. And, if we ever fall short, we’ll do everything we can to remedy the situation quickly and appropriately. We really do take pride in representing our partner’s brands.
At the end of it all, any roaster can buy expensive coffee, roast it up and ship it out. What “specialty coffee” means to us at Path is all cylinders firing at maximum capacity, attention to detail, sticking to our word, and supplying our partners with the best coffee and service. Let us show you the “specialty coffee” experience as it’s meant to be.
To see what we’re up to, please visit our Instagram page @pathcoffee. Also, if you’d love to view our YouTube channel, you’ll get fresh content on dropshipping, coffee knowledge, brewing, and more.
Path Coffee Roasters is located in Port Chester, NY, where we roast and package all our coffees weekly for our wholesale, retail, and dropshipping customers.
Please reach out to us if you have any questions. We’re here to help.
