Sourcing and roasting coffee are two very important aspects of a roasting company. Once you've sourced a really delicious coffee, how do you transfer that into a production roast? In this episode, we share our process from cupping sample roasts to carrying it over into a production roast we're satisfied with.

Our coffee podcast just hit 100 episodes. What initially felt like a side project of our roasting company now has become one of our favorite parts of our whole operation. On episode 100, we reflect back on our favorite moments on the podcast, how impactful this community of listeners has become, and dreaming big about the future of the podcast.

What sets a coffee roasting company apart from others? As home baristas, we've noticed that everyone claims to roast the best specialty coffee. Given how subjective coffee flavor is, is that enough to be different and stand out? In this podcast episode, we break down a few ways we think coffee roasters can stand out and provide more value to coffee drinkers and home baristas.

This week, we blindly cupped over 60 coffees and 14 coffee roasters all at once. There were many delicious coffees on the table which was very fun to taste and experience the many flavor profiles they had to offer. Apart from enjoying all these coffees, this was a big learning experience. Every roaster and every coffee had a piece of data and information that we could learn from. In this coffee podcast episode, we go over the main takeaways from this cupping and how you can start learning from similar experiences.

This is another Q&A podcast episode with really incredible questions ranging from taking risks as a coffee roasting business, the influence of AI on the coffee industry, and how coffee has impacted our family dynamics. The coffee questions as well as the more personal questions really made us think deeply about these topics and challenged us. We had so many really great questions and we're looking forward to answering the others we didn't get to in the coming podcasts.

One of the challenges of having a coffee roasting business is green coffee buying. How you buy green coffee will define the quality level of your finished product. In today's podcast, we dive into how we balance green coffee inventory with coffee harvest seasons from origin to origin. Although there's a lot of nuance to this conversation, we did our best to cover the topic and share how we've maneuvered green coffee inventory over the last few years.

We just came back from our first coffee origin trip as a coffee roasting company. We spent the week traveling, visiting farms, connecting with our producing partners, and learning more about what it takes to turn coffee cherries into coffee beans. This was an extraordinary experience and it has so much to do with the core of what Mirror stands for. Although it's hard to put words to the whole experience, we hope this coffee podcast episode gives you a glimpse of origin!

There's a lot of things that go into running a success coffee roasting operation, but we feel like there's one standout concept that is an absolute essential part to roasting delicious coffee. When we first started to crack down on systems around our roasting operation, a lot of things began to improve. It was a game changer. Tune in to this episode of the Coffee Roaster Warm Up Sessions podcast to hear more about the importance about systems in roasting and how that could help you in your roasting.

What does one of the most expensive cup of coffees taste like? What should you expect a coffee scored at 96 to offer? Is this even necessary or beneficial to coffees at these price points sold and brewed?  We answer these questions and more in this episode as we talk about our experience trying Proud Mary's Panama geisha natural called the Black Jaguar. This was by far one of the most memorable cups of coffee we've had, and there is so much to share about the experience.

On this coffee podcast episode, we have Andrew Pernicano from Flair Espresso! This was such an enjoyable conversation as we dived into the story behind Flair Espresso, how they come up with new coffee gear for home baristas, and what it's like making coffee with the Flair 58 espresso maker. Andrew shares about what he's noticing amongst home baristas and coffee enthusiasts, and what they're working on in this upcoming year.