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Roasting Science
How heat turns green coffee into flavor — and how a profile decides what you taste.
What it is
Roasting is where a green seed becomes coffee. Heat, time, and airflow drive hundreds of reactions that build acidity, sweetness, body, and aroma. The same bean roasted two ways can taste like two different coffees — which is exactly why it's worth studying.
What we do here
We profile roasts on calibrated equipment, log every batch, and cup variations of the same coffee side by side to connect what we changed to what we taste. Students learn to read a roast curve, not just follow one.
Research underway
We're mapping specific profile moves — development time, charge temperature, airflow shifts — to measurable differences in the cup, building a reference library from our own roast data.
Reading & research
Papers, articles, and work from the Centre and the wider field.
How development time shapes sweetness
A side-by-side study of three development ratios on the same Guji lot.
Reading the roast curve
What the first-crack-to-drop window tells you before you ever taste.
Roasting takes graded green coffee from the mill and hands prepared coffee to the brew bar. What happens here depends on everything before it — and decides everything after.