Saint Coffee Roasters: Crafting Exquisite Coffee With Passion
Introduction: An Inside Look at Saint Coffee Roasters
Saint Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee company renowned for their unwavering commitment to sourcing, roasting, and brewing extraordinary coffees. Founded in 2008 by a team of dedicated coffee enthusiasts, Saint Coffee Roasters seeks to deliver coffee experiences that delight the senses and connect people more deeply with the beans in their cups.
At Saint Coffee Roasters, exceptional taste is an obsession. Their team travels tirelessly to remote coffee farms across the globe to find the most prized beans. They meticulously craft signature roast profiles to coax the best flavors out of each unique coffee variety. And their skilled baristas painstakingly prepare coffee using specialized techniques to achieve optimum extraction. Saint Coffee Roasters pours their heart and soul into every step of the coffee’s journey from crop to cup.
This article will take you inside Saint Coffee Roasters’ world of exquisite coffee. You’ll learn about their direct relationships with growers, their vintage roasting equipment, their expert baristas, and their relentless pursuit of the perfect cup. Read on for an in-depth look at what sets this artisan roaster and specialty coffee company apart.
Sourcing Only the Finest Coffee Beans
The flavor and complexity of any great cup of coffee starts at the source. That’s why Saint Coffee Roasters is so selective about the beans they choose to roast. Through carefully cultivated direct trade relationships with farmers around the world, they gain access to prized coffee beans that few other specialty roasters can acquire.
Establishing Trusted Relationships with Growers
Instead of purchasing beans through exporters or commodities brokers, Saint Coffee Roasters travels to origin countries like Guatemala, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Colombia to meet growers face-to-face. They invest time getting to know farmers personally and learning the nuances of their land and cultivation techniques. This allows them to establish partnerships based on transparency, fairness, and mutual commitment to quality.
For example, Saint Coffee Roasters has worked closely with the Morales family in Guatemala for over 5 years. Each year, they visit the family’s farm high in the Guatemalan mountains to check on the crop and collaborate on experiments with different varietals like Bourbon, Caturra, and Catuai. The Morales trust Saint to honor their hard work by roasting their beans to perfection.
Beyond Guatemala, Saint has also cultivated direct relationships with the Muramira Cooperative in Rwanda, the Ayalew Abajebe family farm in Ethiopia, and the La Palma y El Tucan cooperative in Colombia. At each partner farm, Saint seeks to support sustainable practices and fair prices.
“We don’t let anyone else buy our best beans,” says Diego Morales, “Only Saint, because we know they will showcase the unique flavors our coffee has to offer.”
By dealing directly with growers across several continents, Saint can negotiate prices that are beneficial for both parties and also contribute resources to support sustainable farming practices. This ethical approach ensures they have access to green coffee cherries selectively hand-picked at peak ripeness.
Seeking Out Exotic and Rare Coffee Varietals
Beyond building relationships with talented growers, Saint Coffee Roasters seeks out exceptional coffee varieties that few other specialty roasters have access to. Their team is constantly sampling promising micro-lots from innovative farms around the world.
The Yirgacheffe region in Ethiopia produces some of the world’s most sought-after coffees, including exotic varieties like Geisha and Harrar. Saint has secured exclusive access to Yirgacheffe micro-lots from a pioneering farm growing an indigenous strain called Mordecofe. They value Mordecofe for its intense jasmine aroma and bright citrus notes.
Other prized varietals Saint has discovered through its relentless coffee scouting include the vanilla-toned Pacamara of El Salvador, the creamy Maragogype of Brazil, and the bergamot-infused SL-28 and SL-34 varietals from Kenya. By sourcing these rare beans and creating tailored roast profiles, Saint can offer customers distinctive tasting experiences found nowhere else. The team is always exploring, sampling and connecting with innovative coffee farms to find the next coveted bean.
Obsessing Over the Art of Roasting
After procuring speciality coffee beans from the most acclaimed farms worldwide, Saint Coffee Roasters gets to work unlocking their full sensory potential through meticulous roasting. Their roastmasters are deeply knowledgeable about the scientific process of transforming green coffee into consumable art. By customizing each stage of the roast, they coax the best attributes out of every bean.
Developing Signature Roast Profiles
Roasting is part science, part instinct. Based on years of experience and experimentation, Saint’s roastmasters have dialed in signature roast profiles perfectly tailored to highlight the unique characteristics of beans from different origins.
For example, their proprietary medium roast for Sumatran coffee accentuates the bean’s rich, earthy qualities and restrained sweetness. A lighter roast preserves the complex fruit notes of their Rwandan coffee, while a darker French roast adds body to balance the sparkling acidity of their Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Every roast profile is painstakingly developed to draw out the flavors that make each coffee special.
Small 3-5 kilo batches ensure consistency and quality control for Saint’s specialized roasts. Whether it’s their single-origin coffees or artfully crafted blends like the citrusy Sunrise Blend or chocolatey Evening Blend, customers can expect Saint’s roasts to deliver on the flavors promised.
Utilizing Vintage Roasters for Small-Batch Craftsmanship
To achieve their high-precision roasting, Saint uses refurbished antique roasters from the 1920s-1950s. For example, their 1953 Jabez Burns model 115LB offers incredible roast control due to its horizontal drum design with precise temperature monitoring. They also employ a 1929 Gothot model 500 that allows fine tuning of airflow and agitation.
The small batch size facilitated by these vintage machines enables intricate customization based on the bean’s moisture content, density, size, and other attributes. For instance, their 1953 Probat gas-fired drum roaster handles just 25 pounds at a time. This allows Saint’s roastmaster to tailor the roast timeline, making subtle tweaks that finesse acidity, enhance sweetness, and perfect bean colorization. Such meticulous control is impossible with larger commercial roasters, resulting in Saint’s small-batch coffees bursting with nuance and flavor.
Brewing for the Ultimate Coffee Experience
Creating an exceptional cup of coffee requires expertise not just in sourcing and roasting, but also brewing. That’s why Saint Coffee Roasters invests heavily in training for their baristas to master various coffee preparation techniques. Their skilled team then works diligently to optimize the extraction of each roast to deliver its full sensory experience in brewed form.
Partnering with Skilled Baristas
Saint’s in-house barista training program is led by United States Barista Championship finalists and World Brewers Cup competitors. They attract passionate coffee professionals by offering competitive salaries and benefits, chances for continuing education, and a strong workplace culture. The team has decades of combined experience using state-of-the-art equipment like Synesso espresso machines and EK43 grinders.
Visiting Saint’s cafes in Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles, you’ll find baristas who can converse fluently about coffee origins, processing methods, and brew science. Their enthusiasm translates into remarkable creations, like espresso drinks with artful latte foam and cold brews infused with housemade flavorings. Saint’s emphasis on expertise empowers their baristas to prepare coffee that’s as nuanced as their roasts.
Optimizing Extraction for Each Roast
Every coffee preparation requires its own specialized technique. Espresso, for example, depends on balancing the grind size, dose, and flow rate to achieve optimal extraction for Saint’s darker roasts. For pour over, they would use a courser grind and different pour pattern to best showcase the subtle notes in their lighter roasted Ethiopian coffee.
Their baristas are deeply knowledgeable about calibrating brew factors to highlight the distinct characteristics of each roast. Meticulous cupping sessions help identify ideal parameters like water temperature, steep time, and filtration method. Customers can rest assured that every French press, cold drip, or espresso-based drink on Saint’s menus has been painstakingly dialed in by passionate coffee craftspeople.
Conclusion: The Saint Coffee Roasters Difference
What sets Saint Coffee Roasters apart is their obsessive commitment to sourcing distinctive beans, perfecting customized roasts, and delivering exceptional brewed coffee experiences. They are driven by pure passion to push the boundaries of coffee excellence from crop to cup.
From the Ayalew Abajebe family farm in Ethiopia to Saint’s vintage Jabez Burns roasters and expert Seattle baristas, each step of Saint’s process reflects deep coffee knowledge and dedication to their craft. The proof is in the complex, tantalizing flavors found in every sip of Saint’s coffees. There is simply no other specialty roaster that curates rare beans or crafts signature roasts with such artistry and attention to detail.
The next time you sip a Saint Coffee, take a moment to appreciate the incredible journey those beans have been on. From prized coffee cherries hand-selected at origin to meticulously developed roast profiles and brewing techniques, that beverage in your cup represents a remarkable mastery of the coffee craft. Saint Coffee Roasters’ passion for coffee is unmistakable, and their excellence from farm to cup is unparalleled.
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