Coffee 101
The Kick-ass craft of Blending & Roasting
Pre-Roast & Post-Roast Coffee Blends
Beans. There’s sooooo much flavour in a bean.
AND SOOOO MANY FLAVOURS TOO.
Blueberry, caramel, citrus, cherry, toast, chocolate. Coffee beans are diverse.
It’s common to roast and package just one kind of bean at a time. These roasts are commonly known as single-origin roasts, and are an expression of just one type of bean.
But what happens when you mix different types of beans together?
Blending beans happens to be our specialty.
Kicking Horse Coffee is delicious because we create and roast remarkable blends of coffee.
All our coffees are blends of different kinds of beans.
That allows us to create flavour profiles that are rich and complex, andcontain surprising and distinct tastes and aromas.
For example, we can take beans with bright floral flavours, and mix them with other beans that have deep chocolaty flavours.
It's their combination that creates extraordinarily delicious results!
Blending is a finely honed craft. It requires a superior knowledge of coffee beans, and how their flavours work and interplay with one another. It requires sourcing and curating consistent beans with the right flavour profiles. And then, on top of all that, there’s the roasting.
Roasting coffee blends requires an understanding of thermal dynamics, molecular density, magic, and more than a hint of madness. Lucky for us — that's a description of our Rocky Mountain roasting team!
Kicking Horse Coffee specializes in pre-roast blends and post-roast blends.
What's the difference between pre-roast and post-roast blends?
Pre-roast blends are where green beans are mixed together before the roast. We meticulously experiment to create a perfect recipe, where all the beans are roasted to perfection, all together, at the same time.
The resulting symphony of flavours is a product of incredible dedication and rigorous quality control.
Most of our roasts are pre-roast blends.
But we also create some post-roast blends.
Post-roasts are where each type of bean is roasted separately, and then after roasting, they are mixed.
BLENDED ROASTS ARE OUR SPECIALTY, AND WE’RE PROUD OF WHAT WE DO.
Open a package of Three Sisters beans (our most notable post-roast coffee) and you’ll see a range of colours — from light-caramel hues to deep and dark beans.
This is because Three Sisters is a mixture — a combination of both lighter and darker roasts. The result is one of our best selling coffees, which boasts a distinctly rich and smooth flavour.
We’ve come a long way from roasting tiny batches in the garage. Everything we’ve learned about roasting along the way has helped make our coffees more delicious.
Plus, we’re stoked we get to share our roasting magic with folks who love kick-ass coffee!
Check out our how to brew guides and more Coffee 101.