Barrel Conditioned Coffee

Barrel Conditioned Coffee

IN COL­LAB­O­RA­TION WITH JOE­BEL­LA COF­FEE ROASTERS

WEL­COME TO THE FIRST SOCIAL­LY ACCEPT­ABLE WAY TO GET YOUR WINE FIX BEFORE 8AM!

Green (unroast­ed) cof­fee beans are very porous, and will rapid­ly absorb the scents and char­ac­ter­is­tics that sur­round them. His­tor­i­cal­ly, importers saw this as a risky trait, as their cof­fee could absorb unwant­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics from every­thing they came into con­tact with pri­or to roast­ing. How­ev­er, as res­i­dent geeks of any­thing bar­rel-aged or fer­ment­ed, we saw this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate some­thing tru­ly unique.

We became inter­est­ed in exper­i­ment­ing with unroast­ed cof­fee beans and red wine bar­rels to see how the two would inter­act. We found an engaged and equal­ly excit­ed part­ner in the roast­ers at JOE­BEL­LA Cof­fee Roast­ers in Atas­cadero and start­ed the exper­i­ments in late 2014. From that point on, we have worked with JOE­BEL­LA to cre­ate over 30 blends of bean and bar­rel, each fea­tur­ing beans with dif­fer­ent ori­gins and bar­rels used to age our favorite red wines.

Each com­bi­na­tion of bean and bar­rel cre­ates a fla­vor pro­file that pre­serves the integri­ty of the cof­fee while adding a hint of fruit, oak, spice and oth­er fla­vor char­ac­ter­is­tics present in wine. We like to think that we have cre­at­ed the per­fect mar­riage between two of our favorite things, and we hope you enjoy the results as much as we have.

If you are curi­ous about the process and what com­bi­na­tion of bean and bar­rel makes up your spe­cif­ic batch, brew a cup and keep reading!

The Barrels

Niner barrels are steam-cleaned at the winery, after they’ve been used for wine.

Niner barrels being steam-cleaned at the winery

The Beans

Then Joebella begins with green, unroasted coffee beans.

Green, unroasted coffee beans at Joebella

The Roaster

Where all the magic happens: all coffee is small-batch roasted in this machine.

The red enamel roasting machine at Joebella coffee.

The Bin

The freshly roasted beans are dumped into this bin, where the turning arm will help rapidly cool them.

Steam coming off the full turning bin as the fresh-roasted beans begin to cool.

The finished product!