First things first: the coffee you buy from us comes in a pod. Shocker, we know. This means that we need to process our beans extra carefully and pay particular care to how we roast and grind what we source. It really all comes down to extraction and flavour: if the bean we’re roasting up doesn’t cut the mustard, we trial, test and repeat until it’s perfect.
Sample roasting
When we receive the green beans into our warehouse, we first have to check the notes from our suppliers to see what subtle notes and tones the bean is supposed to have. Based on our knowledge of these beans, we use this as a start for what we are hoping to achieve using a smaller sample roast. When trying to achieve a roasting profile a good ballpark is that those fruity and more citrus flavours are made in lower temperatures at shorter times. In contrast, those nutty and chocolate flavours come through with higher temperatures roasted for longer. At every stage, we cup the beans and taste along the way (we have a hard life, don’t we?) to ensure the coffee isn’t underdeveloped or over-roasted. Using this procedure, we make adjustments to the roast until it’s pod perfect.
Batch roasting
Once we are satisfied you’re gonna get one helluva cuppa, we then move to roasting larger amounts of beans. This is harder than it seems as what can work and taste one way in the sample roast can come out differently when you roast 200 KG of green beans at once. Like always, it’s a ‘lil cycle of roast, taste, and repeat. Now you understand why we always sound like we’re buzzing!
Grinding
When grinding the final roast for our coffee pods, it’s all about optimising the grind for maximum flavour. We try to extract maximum TDS (total dissolved solids) which allows the best parts of the coffee to be extracted to create that signature smooth and delicious crema you all love. Without it, what you get is an over-extracted coffee that leaves a bitter, watery taste in your mouth. We shuddered just thinking about it. Once we are happy with the grind and it’s giving us the perfect extraction time (between 20 – 30 seconds for all you detail devils), we take the coffee to our pod plant to pack a pod that hits the goldilocks zone (just right!).
Considering how small a pod is, the fine balancing act of roasting the bean, so it’s just right and then grinding the bean to ensure the extraction is key here. Long story short: getting every batch of coffee right can take weeks, maybe even months!
Aside from all the trialling and testing of all the beautiful brews (worst job EVER, right?) - our process of roasting and grinding is something that we take very seriously. The goal is for only the best of our beans to be turned into the best of our brews, of course with a truly tried and tested process. Ensuring that we're able to pack the best coffee into your lil' coffee pod is the true priority in all that we do - nothing less than perfection from us at P&P!
