Note: Serious Eats contributor Allison Hemler is an NYC-based barista who recently traveled to Seattle to check out the internal coffee college at Starbucks HQ. This week, she'll be educating us on tidbits she picked up in class, continuing today with the roasting of beans. When I want coffee made with love, I immediately think of Small World Coffee in Princeton, New Jersey—the location of my first-ever barista position. We had our own roasting plant five miles down the road in a huge warehouse. You'd walk in for a staff meeting after slaving away at the espresso machine all day and the intense aroma would conjure up images of swimming in coffee beans alongside toasting marshmallows for s'mores, stirring a...
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Note: Serious Eats contributor Allison Hemler is a NYC-based barista who recently traveled to Seattle to check out the internal coffee college at Starbucks HQ. This week, she'll be educating us on tidbits she picked up in class, starting with bean origins today. Clockwise from top left: Coffee cherries, washed green coffee, roasted coffee beans. A few weeks ago, I was at the local bar for trivia night when the ultimate question was asked: "Where is the majority of the world's coffee beans grown?" Simple, I thought. I work in coffee and look at names of Latin American and African countries every day. While hesitant, I chose Colombia from my brainstormed list—the popularity of Juan Valdez has got to count...
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