Glossary

•  Light Roast (415-427F): have a brighter, sweet, juicy, fruity, cup flavor with less body and roast taste. These light brown beans will have a bumpy, uneven surface, will look splotchy, and show slight expansion. These are more adventurous coffees and will not hold as well with cream.

•  Medium Roast (428-438F): this is where origin flavors are at their peak. These roasts will usually be nicely balanced, carrying some acidity while having good body. They usually carry flavor tones that are bittersweet, chocolatey, ripe berry, or caramel hints (this varies for each coffee). These beans will have an even medium brown color and will show moderate expansion. They will have a smooth, even surface with a slight sheen. These coffees should hold their flavor with a cream (probably not with International Delight!!)

•  6West Dark Roast (438-448F): this is where origin flavor and roast flavor are balanced. They will carry the same flavors as medium roast but will now have more of a “roasty” tone to them. They will have more dark chocolate tones, with little acidity, and have a fuller body to them. They will have a darker brown color, fuller expansion, and will have an even surface with a sheen to it. These coffees will hold flavor with cream as well.

• Dark Roast (448-468F): this is the new catch phrase you see at all the Big Coffee Chains! Roasting coffee to this level will result in the “roast” flavor eclipsing the origin flavor of the coffee, you may notice tones that taste burnt (see glossary). These beans are very dark brown and will be covered in oil, showing full expansion (if you look you will see small particles of the bean that have exploded off). We do not roast coffee to this point, as our goal is to enhance the natural flavor notes of the coffee not to overtake them.

• Blended Coffee: A blend is a mixture of coffees from multiple origins. Coffees are typically blended to produce a more balanced cup.

• Brewed Coffee: Brewed Coffee refers to all coffee preparations produced by adding non-pressurized water to coffee grounds. Contrasted with espresso coffee, which is produced under pressure, brewed coffee is primarily an extraction.

• Brightness: A euphemistic term to describe acidity in coffee. A bright coffee has more high, acidic notes. Not to be confused with the brighter roast flavors of light roast levels.

• Burnt: Burnt flavors in coffee are the result of over-roasting, fast roasting, or roasting in a high-heat environment. This often occurs when the initial roaster temperature when the green coffee is introduced is too high. Usually, scorching and tipping result in burnt flavors.

• Burr Grinder: A coffee grinder that grinds by passing a flow of beans between a pair of rotating metal discs. The distance between the discs is adjustable, and this adjustment allows one to accurately set the size of the grind. The larger the diameter of the burrs, the faster the grinder is able to grind. Burr grinders can be either "conical" or "flat" burred, each with their own advantages.

• Caffeine: An alkaloidal compound that has a physiological effect on humans, and a slight bittering flavor. It is found throughout the coffee plant but is more concentrated in the seed / coffee bean. Arabica ranges from 1.0 to 1.6% caffeine. Historically, caffeine was used in Aspirin to give it a bitter taste. Once this was done, the makers of Aspirin were left with coffee without caffeine. Trying to come up with an idea to sell this coffee, they decided to market it as de-caffeinated coffee – what a great idea!!

• Carbony: A roast-related flavor term, referring to burnt flavors from dark roast levels. For some this is a pleasant flavor if residual sweetness is present, but plain carbon flavor is usually not pleasant.

• Chemex: A glass filter drip coffee brewer with an extended brew time.

• Degassing: Degassing, or resting refers to the step after home roasting a batch; coffee brewed immediately has so much C0-2 coming off it that it prevents good extraction or infusion of water. Time is often needed to allow the coffee to off-gas. Also, certain characteristics are not developed immediately after roasting, such as body. A rest of 12-24 hours is recommended, or up to 3-5 days for some espresso coffees.

• Dry Process: Dry process is a method to transform coffee from the fruit of the coffee tree to the green coffee bean, ready for export. Dry processing is the original method, and the wet process was devised later (as well as the very recent pulp natural process). It is a simple method, using less machinery and more hand labor, and has been a tradition in some growing origins for centuries. It risks tainting the coffee with defect flavors due to poor handling, drying, or ineffective hand-sorting. In dry processing the fruit is picked from the tree and dried directly in the sun or on raised screens, without peeling the skin, or any water-based sorting or fermenting. The dried coffee turns to a hard, dark brown pod, and the green seed is torn out from the skin and parchment layers in one step, or pounded out by hand. Because there is no chance to skim off floating defects, or removed under-ripes as with the wet process, most defects must be removed visually, by hand. Dry process coffees generally have more body and lower acidity than their wet process counterparts, with more rustic flavors due to the long contact between the drying fruit and the seed. They also can have more defects, taints, and lack of uniformity both in the roast and in cupping. A dry process coffee is sometimes referred to as natural coffee, full natural, or traditional dry process, or abbreviated DP.

• Green Coffee: Green coffee is a dense, raw green-to-yellow colored seed. In it's essence, coffee is the dried seed from the fruit of a flowering tree - each fruit having 2 seeds facing each other (the flat side of the coffee "bean") or in the case of the peaberry, a single rounded seed. Coffee is imported from coffee-producing origins in this form. Green coffee can be stored for months, up to a year or more in vacuum packs, with little to no flavor loss (whereas roasted coffee starts to stale within 10 days from roasting). Coffee is not really a bean, it is the seed from the fruit of a flowering tropical shrub.

• Quakers: A Quaker is an industry term to describe under-ripe, undeveloped coffee seeds that fail to roast properly. These are most often the result of unripe, green coffee cherry making it into the final product. Normally, these are skimmed off as floaters (in the wet-process) or visually removed in the dry-process method. They are removed on the density table (Oliver table) as well. They occur much more often in dry-process coffees due to the lack of water flotation of the fruit, and the difficult task of removing them visually. Even the best coffees might have occasional quakers, and they can be removed post-roast when they are easy to see. Under-developed coffees do not have the compounds to have a proper browning reaction in the roaster (Maillard Reaction, caramelization), so they remain pale in color.

• Specialty Coffee: Specialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average "industrial coffee" or "commercial coffee".

• Wet Process: Wet-process coffee (or washed coffee) is a method to transform the fruit from the tree into a green coffee bean for roasting. This process uses water at the wet mill to transport the seed through the process, allowing for the removal of defects that float to the surface. In traditional wet-processing, the wet mill is where the coffee is pulped (the outer fruit skin removed), floated in water (to remove defective beans), fermented (to break down the fruit mucilage layer), washed (to remove the fruit) and dried on a patio, a screen (raised bed), or a mechanical dryer. At this point green coffee seed is inside an outer parchment shell, rested for a period of time (reposo) then milled at the dry mill into the green bean. Wet processing often produces a brighter, cleaner flavor profile, with lighter body than dry process coffees or the hybrid pulp natural process. Wet process coffees are referred to also as washed coffees, or fully washed. Note that the coffee seed is not fermented in this process, just the other fruit layer between the skin and the parchment shell. This is a natural action of peptic enzymes in the coffee. In different countries they might use a submerged wet fermentation, or a water-less dry fermentation, which is a faster method.