We Air-Cool (We Do Not Water-Quench)

When you roast coffee, you lose weight. That is not a marketing line. It is physics.

Roast about 100 pounds of green coffee and you finish closer to 70. Water leaves the bean. Oils move. Chaff comes off. Around 30 percent of the starting weight is gone.

A lot of companies "cool" beans coming out of the roaster, around 400 degrees, by spraying them with a water mist. That puts weight back on so 70 pounds looks like 100 again. They do not take the loss. The mist starts degrading the roast, can help beans go moldy faster, and is literally watering the coffee down.

We do not do that.

At Santa Barbara Roasting Company, locals call us RoCo. We take the loss. We air-cool the beans with large fans. Slow roast. Small batches. Then air, not a spray. You add the water later, when you brew. We would rather sell you coffee than sell you water by the pound.

That is why our About page says air cooled, not water quenched, and why our brewing page calls dry roasting the only way to roast high quality gourmet coffee. Same idea in the cup: more flavor, less shortcut.

If you want the roast ladder (Full City through French and Double French), that lives on How we roast. If you want why we still take specialty coffee dark, that is already live: Why RoCo Still Roasts Dark. This post is only the cool-down.

Want to see a batch leave the drum and hit air? Come watch Monday through Friday at 321 Motor Way. Story of the in-cafe roast: Watch the Roast at 321 Motor Way.

Come in. Taste the difference. Then let the coffee do the talking.