Coffee Ethics & Standards

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Colorado River Coffee Roasters is guided by a few simple beliefs about how to live and to do business, through a few coffee ethics and standards.

  • Be honest,
  • Be direct in all dealings with customers, suppliers and supporters,
  • Strive for a fair deal for all (customer and roaster),
  • Help others learn about and love coffee, and
  • Listen to and learn from customers.

Our standards

Guaranteed Freshness

Lot’s of things affect the ultimate flavor of a coffee. None has more impact than the degree of freshness. What is freshness, anyway? Well, for our purposes, it’s best described as the degree to which a roasted coffee continues to produce flavors in the cup that it produced within a few hours of roasting.

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You see, coffee, like all agricultural products, is adversely affected by the most common environmental factors. The oxygen in air, when exposed to the coffee, oxidizes the coffee leading to increasingly bitter flavors. Likewise, overexposure to light adversely affects flavor. Finally, time-since-roasting has an effect. The chemical reactions set in motion by roasting don’t just stop when the heat is removed. Unfortunately, reactions continue over time. Ultimately, this results in loss of freshness like exposure to oxygen in the air or overexposure to light.

So, we at Colorado River Coffee Roasters guarantee that our processes will be selected and implemented to prolong freshness from our roastery into your home. First, we don’t grind coffee. We only sell whole beans. Grinding exposes coffee to air and destroys freshness. Our packaging methods also protect freshness (see the “Packaging” page under “About Us” on this site). We will get your coffee to you in one of three ways that will ensure that your coffee is as fresh as possible (see “Delivery / Shipping” page under “About Us”).

Speciality Grade

“Specialty grade coffee” refers to coffee produced from the top green beans on the market.  The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) defines specialty grade coffee as:  “…having no more than 5 full defects in 300 grams of coffee.  No primary defects are allowed.  A maximum of 5% above or below screen size indicated is tolerated.  Specialty coffee must possess at least one distinctive attribute in the body, flavor, aroma, or acidity.  Must be free of faults and taints.  No quakers are permitted.  Moisture content is between 9-13%.”  (http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/scaaclass.htm)

Passion

We love coffee.  We treasure EXCEPTIONAL COFFEE!  We are committed to practices in our sourcing, roasting, packaging and shipping that will ensure that our coffees are EXCEPTIONAL.