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A few pieces of advice.

17 Nov 2013 / Comments Off / in Frontpage Article/by admin

The following is from a Facebook post that I put on a friend’s status. She had just rediscovered coffee after quite a while without. This was my attempt to explain a little bit about why she should try OUR coffee. The points were specific to her situation, but general enough that just about everyone can benefit from them. Hopefully this helps some of you that are “on-the-fence” about whether or not you should try CRCR coffee.
Let me know what you think!

“First thing that you need to know about our coffee (and all of the other GREAT coffees) is that you need to have a grinder. We only sell “whole-bean”, and to be truthful, grinding fresh coffee immediately before you make it will make a TON of difference in the taste. Coffee is a perishable food product. It will go bad. So getting the freshest product possible is vital to ensuring that you have a quality cup of coffee. All of our coffees are roasted soon AFTER they are ordered. We don’t keep a bunch of bags just lying around waiting for someone to hopefully buy them. It’s as fresh as we can make it. Each bag will have a roast date on it.

All of our coffees are a light to medium roast. You can taste the flavors that are naturally in the bean, instead of just getting a burnt, acidic aftertaste. Coffee beans are a lot like wine grapes. They take on the characteristics of the soil in which they are grown. So, a Guatemalan will have a considerably different flavor than an Ethiopian, and much different than a Sumatran. Our job, as roasters, is to bring out those natural flavors without turning it into a lump of charcoal.

A lot of people will say, “I like my coffee strong”…well, strength has to do with the dose. How much coffee is used and how much water? Unfortunately, people are starting to equate STRONG coffee with BURNT coffee. We are trying to show that each coffee naturally has a marvelous taste to it, without being cooked to a charred oily mess.

When you are using fresh-roasted coffee, the flavors are much more prevalent. As a result, you don’t need as much coffee to produce a great flavor. Take your dosing down by about 20 percent. If you normally use 5 scoops of another coffee for a full 12-cup pot, just use 4 scoops of ours, and you will still get a great cup of coffee, but you don’t need as much.

One last point: Don’t put your coffee in the freezer or refrigerator! Keep it in a cupboard or pantry, away from the direct sunlight and keep the bag closed so as to not let air into it. In the freezer or fridge it will accumulate a lot of moisture inside the bag, which will pull the oils from the coffee much more quickly than normal. This release of the oils (contrary to popular opinion) is not a good thing. That means that the bean is starting to degrade and will lose it’s flavor soon. People say that they get more flavor from their coffee after it has become oily….well that coffee has become rancid, and the acids are taking over. You’re getting more flavor, but is it GOOD flavor?!”

What makes CRCR different? (Part 2)

17 Nov 2013 / Comments Off / in Frontpage Article/by admin

Okay, so now it’s time for a little bit of info on HOW we roast, and what sets us apart from many of the

other micro-roasters out there. Anyone can turn coffee brown…you could put a bunch of coffee beans in your oven at home and do it yourself, but you’re not going to get the most flavor from that bean doing it that way….but we use some of the most advanced equipment and processes available to bring out the natural flavor of the beans. This gives the drinker a unique experience when he/she has a cup of OUR coffee.

Our goal, with each load that we roast, is to bring out the best flavor from every bean.We don’t add any flavors or syrup to the beans to put flavors into the coffee. We simply roast to bring out the natural flavors that already exist within each coffee.

All of our coffee is craft roasted, manually, to ensure consistency from roast to roast. If someone has a cup of our Guatemalan coffee this week, we want to make certain that he/she gets the same flavor from another cup of our Guatemalan in 6 months.

At CRCR we use a drum roaster (built by Diedrich manufacturing in Sandpoint, Idaho).

This is a 12 Kilo machine which gives us the capacity to put out approximately 20lbs. of coffee per load.

The beans are poured into the funnel atop the roaster, and then dropped into the drum. Heat is applied via 2 infared burners that run the length of the drum, underneath, on both sides. This applies even heat to the entire rotating drum at all times. Two cast-steel “heat exchangers” cover the uppermost area of the drum to catch the heat that radiates off the roasting drum and push it back onto the drum and into the roasting chamber. All of these things ensure even heat to all areas of the roasting chamber at all times. The beans are constantly tumbling, never resting in one spot (and potentially scorching). In addition to the conductive heat from the burners, we use convective heat (by controlling the airflow though the drum) to penetrate to the core of the coffee bean, and cook the inside as well as the outside.

All of these things are managed manually by the Roastmaster. Our software allows for a totally automatic roasting process, but we choose NOT to use this option.

I could go on and on about this, but I think I’ll lose many of you if I do, so let me move on….

Each load takes between 15-18 minutes. There are a number of factors that decide how long each load goes, including:
-Origin of the coffee
-Elevation at which the coffee was grown
-Moisture content inside the bean
-Density of the bean (harder beans require different methods to get the heat into the core)
-Airflow inside the drum
-Degree of roast (how dark do we need to get the bean to bring forward the most flavor)
-Size of the load (how much coffee is in the drum-5lbs will roast completely different than 20 lbs)
-Atmospheric issues (outside temperature, wind, humidity)
Each of these factors is taken into account for every load that goes though our machine to achieve our ultimate goal…..WE WANT YOU TO TASTE THE WONDERFUL NATURAL FLAVORS EACH COFFEE POSSESSES!

Just a quick note on the degree of roast: We WILL NOT burn our coffee! Many other coffee companies, including several microroasters, believe that the darker the bean, the better….we find this to be ridiculous. Darker will get you flavor, for sure, but do you really want that flavor to be “charcoal?” We want, no, we need our clients to taste the wonderful properties that our coffees have to offer.

What makes CRCR different? (Part 1)

17 Nov 2013 / Comments Off / in Frontpage Article/by admin

One of the things that we take GREAT pride in at CRCR is that we are very particular about how, and WHAT, we roast.

We use nothing but Specialty Grade, 100% Arabica beans. With the help of our importers (we are currently using three different U.S. based importers) we make certain that we find the best beans available.

First off, we may need to explain what we mean by “Specialty Grade.” This refers to the number of defects that can be found in the green coffee beans. Here is how the SCAA determines what is and isn’t Specialty Grade

Grade 1: Specialty Grade Coffee Beans: no primary defects, 0-3 full defects, sorted with a maximum of 5% above and 5% below specified screen size or range of screen size, and exhibiting a distinct attribute in one or more of the following areas: taste, acidity, body, or aroma. Also must be free of cup faults and taints.

Grade 2: Premium Grade Coffee Beans: Same as Grade 1 except maximum of 3 quakers. 0-8 full defects.

Grade 3: Exchange Grade Coffee Beans: 50% above screen 15 and less than 5% below screen 15. Max of 5 quakers. Must be free from faults. 9-23 full defects.
Grade 4: Standard Grade Coffee Beans: 24-86 full defects.
Grade 5: Off Grade Coffee Beans: More than 86 full defects.

Source: Green Coffee Classification System Poster from the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

In addition to the number of defects, each coffee is given a “Score” to see how well it stands up when roasted. On a 100 point scale, a Specialty Grade coffee needs to score 80 or above.

Okay, so it’s a little bit confusing and a touch boring for many folks…here’s the bottom line:
CRCR only roasts coffees that score 80 or higher, with a minimum number of defects, to make sure we get you the best tasting coffee out there. We start with the highest quality product, and then take exquisite care of it in the roasting to make sure that you can taste the difference!

I’ll talk more about OUR processes soon, but now you’ve got a little background in what we’re dealing with.

Why coffee?

17 Nov 2013 / Comments Off / in Frontpage Article/by admin

Now, don’t get used to this…I’m not certain I can make this posting thing an everyday occurrence, but I thought I’d at least start things off fairly regular. I’ll just say this, I’ll be here as often as I can.

Many people have asked me over the last few years “Why coffee?”, and “What made you get into this?” The answer to both questions is the same: Family.

Personally, I’ve had a love of coffee for years….and I’ve come to find that it’s genetic. My father is a caffeine fiend, and apparently it’s passed down through the bloodline. He started roasting his own beans (on a much smaller scale) to feed his habit, and brought me in to give it a try. Right off the bat, I knew I would have a blast roasting coffee. After months of talking, researching, and training with some of the most knowledgeable coffee folks in the country, we decided to start a company together, centering on that caffeinated goodness that we have found flowing through our veins….coffee!
But not just any coffee….GOOD coffee!

There was a distinct lack of quality, fresh-roasted coffee in the Southern Nevada area (by the way, we’re located in Boulder City, about 20 miles outside of Las Vegas) and we decided to take a shot at starting a business together focused on roasting the highest quality coffee beans available. But roasting them in a way that highlights the natural flavors in the coffee bean. Unlike many of the other coffee companies, we choose NOT to turn our coffee into a black oily mess.

The business has become a success, and is completely family owned and operated. I’m proud to say that I work side-by-side with both of my parents, my little sister, and we’ve even got my wife involved (she’s there to keep me in line). All of us had been moving in different directions with our work, and this helped bring us closer together. Spending time with family, building something that we can all be very proud of, making a couple of bucks doing it, AND doing what you love….what more could anyone ask for?

Let’s get this started, shall we?

17 Nov 2013 / Comments Off / in Frontpage Article/by admin

Well, here goes! My first attempt at blogging. We’ll keep this simple to get it going.

With this new-fangled blog thingy, I’m going to talk about CRCR’s humble beginnings, what we’ve learned about coffee, and how we are continuing to grow in our roasting processes.

Each and every day, we learn something new about coffee. We will try to share everything that WE have learned, and make you take a different look at your morning “cup of joe.” Our goal is to make everyone LOVE and appreciate coffee as much as we do! Will it work? Only one way to find out……

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