Consistency is boring!

My Coffee Roasts Aren’t Consistent. And I’m OK With That.

I sometimes think I must be the most inconsistent coffee roaster in the UK.

Probably not something you’re supposed to say when you’re trying to sell people coffee. But let me explain.

There’s a lot of talk in speciality coffee roasting about consistency. Following roast curves, repeating a successful batch and making sure the next one tastes exactly like the last.

I understand why. If you’ve roasted a coffee and it tastes brilliant, wanting to do it again makes perfect sense.

But at Freda, I’m usually still thinking about what I could change. Could it be sweeter? Could that fruit come through a little more clearly? Could I make it feel a bit softer and more rounded?

And by the time I feel like I’m getting somewhere, I’ve often run out of the coffee.

The reality of being a small coffee roaster

freda-coffee.live is a small, independent Sussex coffee business, and I’m the person doing the roasting.

I’ll often only have enough of a particular coffee for six to twelve batches. Sometimes, a single sack of green coffee gives me just three batches on the roaster I use.

That’s a fairly short relationship. A few opportunities to get to know a coffee, work out what I like about it and see whether I can bring out a little more.

It also means that I rarely reach a point where I think, “Right. That’s perfect. Don’t change anything.”

More often, I’m tasting the last roast and making a small adjustment to the next one. So if you buy the same coffee a few weeks apart, you might notice a difference.

Every first roast involves some educated guesswork

I don’t go into a new coffee completely blind.

Experience gives me a starting point. Where it was grown, how it was processed, its variety and altitude all help me think about how I might approach it.

But I still need to find out how that particular coffee responds on the machine I’m using.

Even a sample roast can only tell me so much. I can learn from it, but I can’t simply copy its timings and temperatures onto a much bigger roaster and expect exactly the same result.

At some point, I have to roast a batch, let it rest, brew it and taste it.

There’s always a slightly nerve-racking moment when you’ve put hundreds of pounds’ worth of coffee into a roaster and would quite like your educated guess to be a good one.

Usually, I’m chasing sweetness

Most of the adjustments I make are about sweetness and balance.

With a first roast, I tend to err on the side of giving the coffee a little more development. Personally, I’d rather start with something slightly more developed than I eventually want than end up with that green, grassy taste I dislike in an underdeveloped roast.

That’s my preference, and it gives me somewhere to work from. I can taste the result and decide whether to pull things back a little in the next batch.

The recent Cajamarca from Peru is a good example.

When I drank the fourth batch, I felt it tasted a bit darker and roastier than I wanted. It made a lovely espresso, but I’d chosen it for my filter coffee selection, and I was looking for something lighter and more delicate.

By batch six, after making changes, it was tasting amazing to me. Much closer to what I’d been hoping for.

That doesn’t make batch four a bad coffee. Someone drinking it as espresso might quite reasonably have preferred it. But it does explain why I didn’t want to keep repeating that roast.

Different doesn’t always mean better

I’d love to tell you that every adjustment makes the coffee better. It doesn’t.

Sometimes I change something and prefer the previous batch. Sometimes I bring out a quality I was looking for, but lose a little of something else I enjoyed.

And sometimes what tastes better to me might not taste better to you.

I have enough experience to make a coffee I’m happy with and still recognise things I’d like to improve. Enjoying a cup and thinking about what I might do differently next time can happen together.

I think that’s true of most things you spend time trying to get good at. Running, playing guitar, making bread. The more attention you pay, the more you notice.

Perfection starts to feel quite a long way away once you become good at spotting the imperfections.

Coffee, cinnamon buns and the joy of a changing batch

I enjoy making bread at home. I felt the same way when I used to make cinnamon buns at Bond Street Coffee in Brighton.

You could follow the same recipe and still get little differences between batches. You’d notice them, think about what had happened and make an adjustment the next time.

There was something lovely about that. Being involved, paying attention and gradually getting a feel for what you were making.

Roasting coffee gives me a similar feeling.

I want every batch to be enjoyable. I also want the freedom to respond to what I’m tasting, especially when I think a small change could make it more interesting or bring out more sweetness.

That’s part of what I love about working with seasonal, single origin coffee beans. There’s always another coffee to get to know, and always something else to learn.

I’d love to know what you taste

I do wonder how much of this you notice at home.

Have you bought the same coffee twice and preferred one bag? Have you noticed it becoming sweeter, brighter or a little more developed? Or have you simply enjoyed it and got on with your morning, which is also completely reasonable?

I don’t get a huge amount of detailed feedback, and I’d really welcome more. If something tastes particularly good, tell me. If a batch hasn’t worked for you, please get in touch and tell me that too.

You don’t need tasting qualifications or an elaborate description. “I liked the last bag more” is a perfectly useful place to start.

I can’t promise every bag will taste identical. What I can promise is that I’m paying attention, tasting what I roast and thinking carefully about the next batch.

Some people want the same pint, from the same brewery, in the same pub, every time. Fair enough. There’s comfort in knowing exactly what you’re going to get.

But I like trying something a little different. I like that the next batch might surprise me, and that there’s still something to work on.

For me, there’s something beautiful about coffee being imperfect and ever changing.

Consistency is boring.

There. Probably another thing you’re not supposed to say when you’re trying to sell coffee.