The Royal Blog

Reflecting on the last six months of roasting styles at The Crown.  For as long as we’ve been serving coffee, The Crown’s menu has featured a revolving door of fresh and seasonal coffees served across a number of brewing styles. By far, our most consistent outturns (aside from cold brew in the warmer months) are […]

Mise en Place Setting Up for Success as a Home Roaster By Evan Gilman and Nate Lumpkin   Roasting in the comfort of one’s own home is, in our minds, one of the most pleasurable experiences in the coffee world. Having your creature comforts nearby while you roast makes the whole affair much more manageable; […]

Editor’s note: Lowell Powell, partner to Royal’s Marketing & Outreach Director and Catracha Coffee Founder Mayra Orellana-Powell, is the architect of the Catracha Quality Project and a driver behind many of the coffee processing innovations taking place on the ground in Santa Elena’s coffee community. His essay here was a response to Royal’s Home Roasters […]

Extolling the Virtues of Dark Roasts By Nate Lumpkin with illustrations by Elise Becker, Crown Baristas Man, I really love dark roast coffee. I love walking into a place and asking for a “coffee” and getting a cup that burns the heck out of my mouth and tastes like tar smoke. I love diner coffee, […]

Roasting on the Quest M3s: An Update A year down the road, and we are still roasting on the Quest M3s roaster, now set up here at The Crown in our roasting lab. We’ve had classes for our baristas and the public to learn to roast on this machine, and we’ve released more than 50 […]

Roasting coffee influences flavor, but it is not the final step in the process. Unless you are roasting your own competition coffee, roasting for a barista or brewer competitor is a similar process to roasting for any other customer. Once a competitor chooses a coffee, they will need the roasted coffee to consistently produce the […]

Over the past year, one component of our weekly Crown Analysis writings has gained attention with a demographic we weren’t used to hearing from home roasters. This welcome attention isn’t something we take lightly, and we want to thank all of you who have gotten in contact with us. The Behmor is one of the […]

Culture, Conflict, and Coffee: Tastings from Uncommon Origins Paired with History You Haven’t Heard (at Blue Bottle in Culver City, Los Angeles) – FREE Register & Learn More Here! Saturday, August 18th, 2:00pm – 4:30pm We’d like to explore a little about why the roasted seed of a fruit, cultivated in diverse conditions, holds such […]

We’re adding a number of new classes to the calendar in March and April for 2018 before we head off to Expo in Seattle. Fact & Folklore: Coffee’s Culture & Cultivation – a Interactive Lecture & Tasting at Pulley Collective – NEW! Tuesday, April 10 @ Pulley Collective in Oakland – $20 An interactive lecture […]