Whose fault is it when the coffee tastes bad? The roaster or the barista? This is a common question I come across whenever I am troubleshooting coffee. Was it poorly extracted or just a bad roast to begin with?

2020 was a crazy year for sure. But we're not out of the woods yet, Covid continues to run rampant even with vaccines being released. This is not an obstacle, but rather a learning opportunity, a chance for us to improve and be better. Here's what we're excited about in 2021.

As baristas, one of our most important jobs is to calibrate the coffee daily and make sure it tastes great. But just like chefs are limited to their ingredients, baristas are limited by their coffee. Understanding how the roast impacts calibration is key to making your coffee taste better. Here's how.

Sometimes a coffee doesn't taste the way we want it to. It tastes bitter or astringent. Here's why and how to fix it.

When you first receive your green coffee, what should you do with it? Do you just jump in and start roasting? Or do you measure the attributes of the coffee, plan and strategize before starting your first roast? If you're not doing the latter, you're wasting time and coffee. Here's how to read the green coffee and get better results straight off the bat with your first roast.

Hint: it's the roast. Cold brew has exploded recently, especially with the covid-19 situation. It allows us to enjoy the goodness of cafes in the comfort of our own homes. But are all cold brews made equal? Of course not, here's what separates the good, the bad and the ugly.

Ahh the coffee refractometer. The amazing $1000 tool first popularized by Matt Perger during his WBC routine. For quite a long time, I used it religiously and incorporated it into many of our operating procedures and research practices. Until I stopped and my coffee roasting improved tremendously. Here's how.

7 days, 10 days, as fresh as possible. So many differing opinions regarding the ideal rest time for your coffee. Guess what? They are all correct. It just depends on the way the coffee was roasted. Let's take a look at how coffee roasting affects the "aging" process of coffee.

Have you ever followed a roaster's recommended brew recipe and got underwhelming results? Or worse still, they didn't even provide a recipe? There are many factors that affect how you should approach calibrating a coffee. One of the major factors is how the coffee was roasted. Here's how coffee roasting affects your brew recipe.

We've all experienced it, we taste a delicious coffee, we buy the beans home, brew it and it doesn't taste the same. Is water the culprit? How should roasters respond to different waters used by their customers?

We recently held a quick poll on social media. Can you roast the inside of a coffee darker than the outside? 60% voted yes while 40% voted no. Then we asked if you can grill the inside of a steak darker than the outside. 27% voted yes while 78% voted no. Why the difference? What's the answer? Read more to find out.

How does your pre-heating routine compare with other coffee roasters? Let's explore some of the pre-heating best practices we've learned from other amazing roasters and compare them with our own pre-heating routine.