Coffee is the core of our family business. For over 25 years, our primary goal has been to create and provide the best tasting coffee. To achieve this goal, we focus on quality and freshness in all aspects of our coffee program. From sourcing and roasting, to brewing and retail, quality and freshness continue to be our top 2 priorities. As a result, our customers have confidence in the integrity of the coffee we craft with care.
The Best Coffee Beans Available
Since we opened in 1992, our options for sourcing specialty green coffee beans have grown in number and complexity. Yet, our goal has remained simple and consistent – to acquire high quality beans from reliable sources that commit to ethical and sustainable practices. Trends that lend themselves to clever and often deceptive marketing don’t appeal to us. In the end, high quality beans that are carefully roasted yield delicious, high quality coffee, regardless of the adjectives, catchy labels, or certifications attached to it. Working directly with experienced importers, we research and purchase pallets of the best coffee seasonably available around the world.
25 Years of Roasting Experience
Roasting is the final and critical act of transforming raw, tasteless coffee beans into the beautifully aromatic browned bundles needed to create the coffee we love to consume. Within the specialty coffee world, roasting techniques vary widely. From light to dark, there’s a whole spectrum of various adjectives that describe the progression of a roast in regards to its increase in time and temperature. At Uncommon Grounds, we roast with the goal of achieving the best tasting, balanced version of each origin we feature. From a scientific perspective, we know that a full-city roast yields a cup of coffee with the most balanced body, acidity, and bitter sweetness. Along the roasting spectrum, full-city sits just over the medium mark.
Regardless of a coffee’s origin, we choose to roast the majority of our beans to a full-city level… full-city equates to the fullest flavor in the cup. Because each coffee’s origin, altitude, and processing method also affect flavor in the cup, our roasters create individual profiles to best highlight a coffee’s natural, inherent characteristics. These profiles are designed to prioritize a bean’s internal development.
Just as a turkey that’s been roasted hot and fast may have browned skin, but be an over or undercooked disappointment inside, coffee, too, can be easily roasted to a brown color. However, without giving beans the proper time and heat needed for necessary internal chemical transformations to take place, flavor in the cup is severely sacrificed. Light roasting a coffee results in an underdeveloped, very acidic tasting coffee. At the other extreme, dark roasting a coffee properly creates a lovely robust bittersweet flavor with low acidity.
Our emphasis on quality and freshness elevates our roasting program to a highly specialized niche that distinguishes our coffee from other roasting companies.
Freshness Will Not Be Compromised
Unlike wine, coffee can not be preserved and collected for future enjoyment. Once it has been roasted, coffee has a 2-week window of optimal freshness. After approximately 14 days, coffee begins to stale, with a noticeable loss of flavor in the cup. Because of our commitment to quality and freshness, we roast in small batches to ensure that all roasted coffee is served or sold within this critical 2-week time frame.
Many specialty stores and even websites will sell “fresh roasted” coffee months past the roast date assuring consumers that their fancy packaging preserves freshness. Although the staling process is delayed inside these sleek, vacuum-sealed packages, once opened and exposed to oxygen, the fragile beans inside will deteriorate faster than if they were simply stored in an opaque, airtight container.
At Uncommon Grounds, we take pride in producing the best tasting coffee possible. Because freshness and quality are our prized attributes, we choose to sell our coffee only to our customers within our 4 cafes or through our website. We intentionally do not wholesale our coffee to grocery stores, restaurants, or specialty markets as we know the integrity of the coffee will most likely be compromised. Due to our almost daily roasting schedule and our high turnover rate, we prioritize promoting coffee at its peak flavor, rather than attempting to preserve freshness that is fleeting.
Incredibly Fresh Coffee
Uncommon Grounds has incredibly fresh coffee due to our daily roasting and high turnover. We only sell direct to our customers through our three cafes or via our on-line store. We do not wholesale to grocery stores, restaurants, or specialty markets because they almost always violate the principle of freshness in regards to coffee. If you enjoy and appreciate coffee that is fresh and tastes fantastic, we invite you to stop by one of our community cafes for a full sensory experience, or order online to have it quick-shipped directly to your home or office.
We hope you enjoy our coffee selections as much as we do.