Matching Coffee Lots to Brewing Methods: Advice for Cafés and Home Brewers

The Roaster’s Role After the Beans Leave the Roastery

A roaster controls green coffee selection and quality, and from there the roast profile. After that, control largely ends. Ideally, customers would taste the coffee the way you do in cupping—giving it time to reach its best drinkable state and noticing how it changes and sweetens as it cools. That is not how it typically works. Once beans leave the roasting facility, the consumer decides how to brew. For this reason, I do not roast with specific brew methods in mind. I do, however, suggest coffee-and-brew-method pairings both to cafés that buy wholesale and to customers who purchase bags in our stores.

The first question I ask a customer or café is how they intend to brew the coffee. (Of course, brewing science covers the body or clarity you might want, but that is a separate topic.) Will they use an automatic coffeemaker, a pour-over, a siphon, a Toddy? Each method will highlight a particular kind of coffee, while other coffees may not show as well.

Understanding why you bought a certain lot of coffee, roasted it a certain way, and therefore have suggested a specific extraction method can work wonders and allows professionals to relate that information to the customers.

Why Batch Brewing Can Suit a Blend

For a customer buying a blend, my preferred method may be unexpected: I prefer they batch brew. Consider a generic blend we will call Blend A. I know Blend A is 30% Guatemalan, 40% natural Ethiopian, and 30% Colombian. I have worked hard on the blend so that each component plays a purposeful role in the intended taste profile. If a customer takes the blend and makes a manual pour-over with, say, 18 grams of coffee, they may end up with a giant fruit bomb. In those 18 grams, they might have brewed 70% natural Ethiopian, 10% Guatemalan, and 20% Colombian. That is only a three-coffee blend—imagine a blend of four or five. The sample size is too small for me to be confident in the cup profile I advertised. With 120 grams in a standard batch brew pot, however, my ratio should be much more accurate.

Matching Coffees to Manual Brewers

When pairing specific coffees with manual brewers, I think about how they function in the café or at home. For example, a light-roasted natural-process coffee tends to filter more slowly in a brewer with smaller drain holes, because naturals have chaff that may clog the drain. This can consistently cause overextraction and create bitterness that is not inherent to the cup. So for a natural I might recommend a V60 or Chemex. Conversely, for a washed single origin I might recommend a Kalita Wave or Beehive, as these have smaller holes and do not let water shoot straight through the grounds. This can help give the customer more control over consistency in the cup.

Wholesale Accounts: Balancing Vision and Partner Goals

On the wholesale side, the situation can be more complex. I view a wholesale account as an extension of my own café. That means not only my coffee but also my reputation are in someone else’s hands. This differs from a customer buying coffee off the shelf. It is important to find a balance between having your vision translate to the final cup and recognizing that café owners will have their own goals and methods of preparation. We like to suggest a specific recipe for pulling our espresso. For our Ozark Copper Espresso, our preferred recipe is 20-gram baskets, 40 to 44 grams out, a 5-second pre-infusion (if possible), and a 26- to 30-second extraction. Not everyone will follow this or have the capability, but we can at least provide a template for those less familiar with the coffee.

For manual brewing, we give a loose guideline based on the brew method used, but we leave room for the barista’s artistry. More than hard facts, I believe talking with and building a relationship with the wholesale customer can have the best impact and help present your vision for coffee. Understanding why you bought a certain lot of coffee, roasted it a certain way, and therefore have suggested a specific extraction method can work wonders and allows professionals to relate that information to the customers.

A Few Questions Go a Long Way

Except for the beans we brew in our cafés, the beans we care for so carefully are ultimately out of our hands once water hits the grinds. Asking a few questions about how a customer will prepare them will go a long way toward ensuring they are treated right and give that customer the experience we worked for.