Features

Peter Rogers is our green coffee buyer who spends up to six months of each year visiting coffee farms; overseeing and supervising the coffee sourcing process.

Each year, Pete Rogers visits dozens of coffee farms – from Mexico to Rwanda - not only to ensure a source of the world’s finest Arabica coffee beans but also to see firsthand that the Rogers’ partner farms are meeting Roger’s standards for socially and environmentally responsible coffee production. He tours all of its partner farms as part of a 20-plus year commitment to permanently improve the quality of life for thousands of coffee farm workers and protect nature in the world’s premier coffee growing regions.

You may be wondering how Pete communicates with the coffee farmers? He is fluent in Spanish and culturally sensitive to the workers in the South American regions, enabling him to have a close working relationship with the Roger’s coffee famers and their workers.

Pete helped launch the Rogers Estate Coffees “Community Aid” program in 1986 when he vowed to address the “appalling” poverty he witnessed on his first trip to Guatemala to source coffee beans.

From its first small project – supplying pencils and paper to a struggling school – Community Aid now turns the company’s Fairly Traded coffee into houses, schools, medical clinics and food while focusing on education to break the cycle of poverty at farms in over 10 countries. Once described by a reporter as a “mini-Peace Corps,” a Community Aid program starts with paying farmers enough to ensure they meet the cost of production and then its contribution to the farm goes up.

Community Aid has completed hundreds of social and environmental projects, including modern houses as well as medical facilities, schools and day care centers for thousands of coffee farm workers and their families.

Community Aid also provides permanent educational programs and scholarships, doctors, nurses, teachers, food and clothing, clean drinking water and energy systems and also protects native plants and animals including endangered species.

To read more about the community aid programs take a look at the case studies here: http://www.rogersestatecoffees.co.uk/index.php?id=82

Fact 1: Coffee “shrinks”, - loses weight - during roasting, while swelling to twice the bean size.

Fact 2: The longer you roast coffee beans, the darker the colour and the higher the “shrinkage”, e.g…, the more coffee it takes to make a pound.

Fact 3: Our normal shrink is 20%; our dark roast shrinkage goes as high as 25%. Lightly roasted coffees can have shrinkage factors as low as 11%.

Fact 4: Most coffee is under-roasted as a cost cutting measure since true gourmet coffee sales have proven the consumer’s preference for “fully roasted” coffee.

Fact 5: There is an “Optimum degree of roast”, that brings out the maximum flavour characteristics for each coffee. This gives the consumer maximum aroma and a rich, full bodied taste.

Fact 6: Under-roasted coffee has a flat, green, grassy astringent flavour. Over-roasted tastes burned or “caramelized”, and the varietal flavours of the coffee are lost in the dominant taste of the roast.

We roast a little darker than most do, because we feel that our standard level of roasting (called “Full City”), achieves the optimum level of flavour.  At this level of roast, the bean has puffed to its fullest, and the seam along the side of the bean has “cracked” open.

When you roast darker, it costs more in green bean shrinkage. It is for that reason, that roasters do not roast this dark. We lose between 3% and 8% more green shrinkage than most others. We do not, however, over-roast the coffee. When you roast darker than our optimal, you start to taste the roast, instead of the coffee. This is a tactic that allows you to “mask” deficiencies of cheaper coffee beans.

This is where Espresso coffee beans and French Roasts come in - it is more the taste of the roast that consumers who like these coffees are looking for. We are on the forefront of new roast concepts. Indeed, we have developed all proprietary roasting profile and techniques!

We roast in relatively small (1,000) batches, for greater control of roast consistency. Our process combines traditional artistry with state-of-the-art technology to achieve the optimum roast level on a very consistent basis. To achieve this, we:

• Determine the optimum roast profile for a coffee
• Duplicate this optimum with computer-assisted temperature, airflow, and movement controls, and
• Provide feedback to the roaster by tasting and testing every roast immediately.

• Coffee stales when exposed to oxygen. It is a gradual process that will deteriorate the flavour over time.
• It is noticeable after only a few days.
• Ideally, you want to remove coffee from an oxygen environment as soon as possible.
• But here’s the problem: fresh-roasted coffee lets off a delicious smelling gas for several days after roasting.

• This “gassing off” is powerful enough to burst any package you put it in.
• Historically, roasters would let the coffee “gas off” for several days, or would poke holes in the packages, so they would not burst.
• Both of these practices allow the coffee beans to stale.

Our Absolute Freshness:

• Our fresh roasted coffee beans go immediately from the roaster into our state-of-the-art packaging machine.

• (Flavoured and ground coffees need an intermediate step, of course).

• This machine pulls a partial vacuum, until the package looks almost like a brick pack.
• These bags contain a special one-way valve on the front.
• As the coffee “gasses off”, the gasses escape through the valve - without letting any air back into the package.
• Our process leaves less than 2% oxygen in the bag to slow staling drastically.
• This keeps the coffee absolutely fresh until you open the bag.
• This process is by far the best way to keep coffee fresh.

There have been an increasing number of articles in the news these days about the health benefits of coffee. We thought we’d keep track of them here for you.

“Coffee could slow mental decline in old men.” (Aug-06)
Nutraingredients.com

“Can coffee fend off diabetes?” (Jun-06)
Daily Mail (UK)