Comparisons are difficult, especially where coffee is concerned, but if lives and time can be measured in daily cups of coffee, then our coffee, roasted by our master roaster, Ken Palmer, is a swiss watch.

Like a clockmaker, a master roaster’s craft mingles scientific precision with artistic intuition. Water, sun and soil make each varietal of green coffee bean unique. Temperature, timing and artistry go into coaxing the best from each bean when it goes into our small batch drum roasters. Each coffee is roasted uniquely, getting more heat here, more time there, pulling the best aspects of the terroir out of the bean as it roasts and darkens.

Ken Palmer learned his craft from legendary West Coast roaster Alfred Peet, one of only a handful to be so honored. He has mastered his craft by traveling to most of the specialty coffee growing regions of the world; from Kona to Mexico, to Central and South America to Ethiopia and points beyond. Roasting Ken’s way depends on all five olfactory senses and a few decades of learning, making his formula for small batch roasting one part botany, one part engineering, one part culinary science, and one part ethnology.

It is interesting to note that approximately 400 man-hours go into producing one 152-pound bag of green coffee. Before a bag of coffee arrives at Java Pura’s roasting facility it has already been on a journey; having been planted, cultivated, hand picked, processed, evaluated, graded, bagged, and finally shipped. We try to honor those hours by meticulously evaluating, then carefully roasting, each bean as the precious product that it is.

Before we buy a bag, or 50 bags for that matter of a particular coffee, we order samples of each bean. We then systematically evaluate every aspect of the green bean for defects in color, density, smell, etc. We then roast these samples and cup them (a ritual akin to a wine tasting), evaluating acidity, body, brightness etc. Only then do we order those coffees that meet our standards, roast them, and then make them available to you, thus completing the unbroken chain of trade, science and craft that begins in the seed and ends in your cup.