Last week, a hunt for green, unroasted coffee beans for an Everyday Food photo shoot led me to Oslo Coffee Roasters in Brooklyn. Oslo has a great, cozy coffee shop, but for this mission I got to go inside the "roasteria," a (heavenly smelling!) warehouse room where the green coffee beans are stored and roasted. Here's a peek:
1 Where the magic happens: this coffee roaster is used to roast all of Oslo's beans. This batch took 15 minutes to roast in the top drum and is now being cooled in the bottom tray.
2 Three different types of "green" coffee beans. From left to right, these beans come from Panama, Sumatra, and Papau New Guinea. Unroasted beans smell nothing like coffee, they actually smell mildly earthy and grassy.
3 Unroasted coffee beans stay fresh in these bins for up to 6 months. The bin on the left is filled with beans from the Nicaraguan highlands. The beans on the right, from Panama, are the ones I ultimately scooped up for the shoot.
4 Oslo gets shipments of bean samples from all over the world; then they roast, grind, and brew small tasting batches to help decide which ones they should buy in bulk and stock at the coffee shop.
5 Reclaimed classroom maps hung in the roasteria show top coffee-growing regions.
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7 After being roasted, the beans are bagged, stamped, and ready to head to the Oslo shop start flying off shelves.
8 Back at the Everyday Food office, the unroasted Panamanian beans get behind the camera at our shoot. Look for their on-page debut in the May issue!
From: Ashley | 3/14/11 at 6:43 pm
Great post. Excited to see what the green beans are for.