A Brew of Art and Science

MICRo (Marco Island Coffee Roasters) recently celebrated its first year of business on Marco Island, preparing fresh foods and drinks, offering entertainment, and providing residents and visitors alike with a modern and cozy vibe to relax in. Another everyday luxury that is offered at MICRo, and one that can often be taken for granted, is fresh roasted coffee.

For Roast Master Frank Prado, the art of roasting has become an everyday scientific formula that he enjoys modifying and tweaking to produce the desired taste. With a neuroscience background and a passion for coffee, he was intrigued by the process. “There are a lot of chemical reactions happening throughout the coffee roast,” said Prado. “It’s like an experiment: how you apply heat, air, other variables together to get different outcomes with the same coffee beans.”

Welcoming the Coastal Breeze behind the scenes, a unique tour was given of the step-by-step process in which their coffee is prepared in small batches.

Sourcing

MICRo works closely with Café Imports, out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. As an independently owned specialty coffee importer, Café Imports manages relationships with hundreds of farmers across the globe, bringing in only the highest quality products for their customers to taste and choose from. Every month, a new batch is ordered after meticulous cupping and tasting of several samples.

“They also invite us to go with them, say to South America, and visit the farms ourselves to see how they develop the relationships, and do cupping on the spot,” said Prado. “Every coffee we buy is organic, direct from a specific farmer through Cafe Imports.”

The Bean

A naturally processed coffee bean from Costa Rica was used for the roasting demonstration. In its raw form, it appears like a green peanut, the seed of a coffee tree, after it is ‘depulped’ from the cherry.

“Naturally processed means that you put coffee cherries in a raised bed and allow the sun to ‘depulp’ it from there. It preserves a lot of really great flavors. We love to use naturally processed coffees for espresso,” Prado elaborated. After the coffee cherries are dried, they are husked, revealing the tiny coffee seed inside, or ‘the coffee bean’.

The Roaster

Prado said the journey truly began when they first sought out an appropriate roaster, “To help drive our business and develop the flavor we were looking for.” They went with a San Franciscan, a five-kilogram drum roaster that operates on natural gas.

The drum takes 30-40 minutes to heat up evenly, a necessary step, as once 10-12 pounds of coffee beans are poured in, if there is a hot or cold spot, the development of the bean is going to be irregular across the batch, which will offset the taste.

The Science

The appropriate ‘charge temperature’ is a key setting when preparing the drum prior to pouring in the bean. Temperature is taken into account depending on the kind of bean and the desired roast one is aiming for. “Each coffee bean is processed differently and has different amounts of moisture and a different density. They all respond to heat differently,” said Prado.

It is not a one-temperature-roasts-all situation. “For a naturally processed coffee, you want to be a little bit more gentle with heat early on, because it's a little bit less dense,” Prado explained. “You can easily scorch the outside of the bean or tip it and have little burn marks. You will taste that burnt flavor in the end product.”

“I like to say that roasting is a little bit of a mix of both art and science. Art in the sense that you want to see the color and how it's developing. You want to be able to smell it, use your senses, see how it's going. A lot of the smells that happen at different parts of the roast indicate what it's going to taste like later on. The science part is what we want to be consistent. We want to have a consistent charge temperature and follow a certain profile to hit.” Prado’s own knowledge has grown in his years of perfecting his roasting methods.

The Roast

The first phase is Drying, where the heat drives trapped water out of the bean and brings the beans from a green color to a yellow. Then comes the Maillard Reaction (or browning), which is the caramelization of the amino acids interacting and creating the fun flavor and smell. Lastly, the ‘First Crack’, where at around 390 degrees steam pressure builds until the bean audibly pops, similar in sound to a popcorn machine. The longer a bean roasts after the ‘first crack’, the darker and less acidic the final cup becomes.

Prado proceeded to pour 10 pounds of beans into the drum. “I like to shut the gas off for the first 25 to 30 seconds of the roast, a technique called ‘soaking’.”

Soaking is beneficial in a roaster because you don't want to drive the roast too hard and give too much heat. It helps to ensure that there's even heat distribution early on in the first 30 to 40 seconds of the roast.

For the beans in the roaster, Prado suggested about 90 seconds. “I'll open the air damper in a bit to help bring a little bit more air through the drops,” said Prado “and we'll progressively open that air as we get deeper into the roast because later on, when we get to the fire phase as well as the first crack, there's a lot more fume and smoke emitting from the coffee that you want to evacuate from the roaster as quickly as possible.” Smoke disrupts the flavor of the coffee.

Prado compared the process to baking bread, “You don’t want to scorch the outside, but you want to create a lot of beautiful flavors within.”

A computer is additionally hooked up to the machine, measuring different items such as the thermal temperature of the drum. A graph is displayed for Prado to carefully monitor the process occurring within.

A small tray can be pulled out of the drum during the roasting to allow Prado to check on the color and the smell.

Once deemed ready, the latch is opened and the beans pour out onto a cooling tray. “You want to bring the beans down to room temperature as quickly as possible because the coffee is still developing even when you're done roasting it,” said Prado.

The Cupping

After the roasting is complete, they let the coffee rest for a few days before they begin to taste the batch to see if it matches the flavor profile of what they are looking for.

The Preparation

Letting the coffee rest before serving is essential. For an espresso, they will wait at least six days as there remains a lot of carbon dioxide still being emitted in the first 48-72 hours after a roast.

Optimal flavor occurs between six to 21 days following the roast, and coffee will begin to lose its peak after three weeks.

To try out the freshly roasted flavor for yourself, stop in and order a cup or buy a bag of beans to take home. One can taste the difference in the small-batch roasted coffee and feel the care that has poured into it. From its initial harvest all the way to the warmth inside your cup.

MICRo is adjacent to The Burrow, located at 845 Bald Eagle Drive, Marco Island.