By: Jonas Gehl
CEO & Co-Founder

We recently had an internal written dialogue on the reasons behind omni roasting. This led to a small exchange, which gave birth to not only roasting methodology, but also topics like quality and equipment.

If you are curious about any of these topics in coffee, the following text might be interesting for you. It also adds more nuances to the understanding of how we think about and work with coffee in Prolog.

The following is an answer to the question: Why do we do omni roasting?

First, how is the choice of omni roasting tied to Prolog Coffee’s mission statement, “To add to the quality of life by giving people better coffee experiences.”?

Secondly, how is this tied to the end coffee experience vision of a coffee that is “Delicious and sense-evoking.”?

What is encompassed in this vision for sensorial experience (delicious and sense-evoking that is) is that it’s a “welcoming experience” but also something which “opens up your senses.” To abstract it, I think about it as a good concert experience, where the music sounds good but also excites you and where you at some level, even small, feel transformed after the experience. For the experience to be something special (in this view) it’s not enough that it’s tasty (as e.g. a classic italian espresso w. sugar) but also not enough that it’s interesting (think a super light roasted/underdeveloped coffee which is more of a statement.) It’s something which hits both parts of the brain: “pleasure and curiosity.” 

In terms of green coffee, I believe we can get this expression from “quality coffees”. What are “quality coffees”? One hypothesis, which I don’t find unreasonable, is that it’s coffees which are resilient and which have vitality because of complexity in its composition, and in its composition of micronutrients. There are studies showing how the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables have deteriorated over time, with 5-30% lower nutritional density than what was measured 100 years ago. This is obviously due to a focus on yield over health of the plants, where the soil has become a monotone substance of fertilizer (nitrogen) and depleted from life using pesticides. Adding to this is the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere which makes the crops produce higher yields due to the increase in photosynthesis but with a lower ratio of nutrient to carbohydrates in the crops - diluting the complexity per volume unit in the crops. The nutritional value in the plants have a big effect on the resilience and health of the plant - and furthermore it influences the organoleptic expression (sensorial expression) of the plants (in this case coffee). It therefore seems that there is a direct correlation between resilience/vitality/health/quality of the coffee plants and the sensorial expression/quality. Ultimately, I think the green coffees that we are looking for are an expression of this, something which is being taking care of and is not being depleted from vitality - quite the opposite. For more information on this, I have attached a paper on nutritional content in fruits and vegetables over time.

Consequently, it’s natural to ask, how do we express this in the roast and brew? This, I have less of a qualified answer to - but I think it’s tied to our mission statement, which is in many ways also about transferring the vitally of the green coffee into the final coffee, which should be delicious and sense evoking. If we succeed with sourcing coffees with the above-mentioned qualities, we want to express - and ideally - amplify this in the roast and brew. 

My own hypothesis is that the main reason why we used to have two different roast styles (filter and espresso) have been because espresso machines and espresso grinders have previously been of a lower quality in terms of its technological composition and for that reason haven’t been able to fully extract lighter roasted coffees. In this hypothesis, the dark roast has been subjected to the technology of the equipment available. Over the last 20 years, we have seen huge improvements in the standard of espresso brewing equipment, and today it isn’t difficult to yield high extractions through today’s available mechanics. The second reason for the darker roast I would hypothesize is due to coffee previously have been a commodity with no focus on quality, and a dark roast were convenient to hide off flavour. The third reason I believe is a cultural/historical one, where I believe coffee in the traditional Ethiopian “buna” coffee ritual has been roasted to the dark side. This buna ritual is then also something completely different than our coffee culture with “filter” and “espresso” coffee.

For these reasons it is therefore on time that we re-evaluate whether we should still have two different roast styles - if it’s the case that the espresso roast has only been supported by the inferiority of equipment and lower quality beans. If so, we are lending ourselves a disservice not to first and foremost focus on how we best possible can extract the inherent qualities of the coffees that we source. Finally, it is the task of the baristas to navigate how to fully extract these qualities (still being in a partnership with the roasters).

From this point of view, the omni roast suddenly becomes a “no-brainer” and maybe the right question to ask is rather “Why do we have two different roast profiles for espresso and filter?” Not “Why do we ‘only’ have one roast profile?” You could argue that it’s way of overcomplicating something simpler. It of course valid to explain this with today’s personal taste preferences of people towards the darker roasts. However, as we have seen in many different foods/beverages over the years (e.g. wine/beer/coffee/bread/fruit), it seems that the needle is moving towards “quality” over tradition - even with the initial gravitation towards the “known” that you “like at the present moment”. The example with coffee is that 20 years ago, most people would think that specialty coffee was absurd in how it tasted acidic. It was simply tasting “wrong” or “incorrect”. Today, we see bigger coffee chains “specializing” or creating specialty coffee offsprings as well as promoting lighter roasts in order to perpetuate the trend (and almost collective movement) towards green coffee of a higher quality, roasted lighter. 

From this perspective, it isn’t clear what the answer is to the question “Why do we have two different roast profiles for espresso and filter?” Perhaps because we can say it very simple: “When a bakery crafts a croissant with the finest butter and the most aromatic flour, we would expect it to explore the baking recipe that reveals the croissant’s highest sensorial potential - something both delicious and evocative of the senses. In the same way that bakery approaches its croissants baking recipe, we approach our coffee’s roasting profile.” If you prefer a different food, just insert “preferred food of the day“. :)

This last question would then be the “short explanation”. The explanation above leading to that question would be the longer.

All this being said, we shouldn’t use this as a dogmatic reasoning for omni roasting. As always, we should stay curious, and ultimately, it’s about best answers the question: “What roast profile yields the coffee experience which is more delicious and sense-evoking?”

Only the next round of QC will tell.

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Photo by Yuya @yuya_filmphotography