Lately I've been hooked on learning about specialty coffee roasting, and I happened to come across an article about a Vietnamese roaster that I just had to take notes on. Phạm Thanh Tùng, head roaster at the roastery 9 Minutes to Miracle, has been in the trade for almost 5 years and spends his whole day in a roasting workshop of barely 40 m².
What struck me most was the way he talks about the craft: roasting coffee means skillfully controlling fire and air to turn humble green beans into a cup of specialty coffee. To be labeled specialty, beans must meet the standards of the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) - few defects and a cupping score of 80 to 100.
I also learned more about storage: imported beans are wrapped in four layers of bags to protect them from knocks, moisture and mold, the last layer being a proper Grain Pro bag designed to keep green coffee. Every day Tùng roasts about 17 batches, and the size of each batch varies depending on orders.
In Vietnam, specialty coffee has only caught young people's attention over the past 7-8 years or so, but I can see it growing really fast. If you're curious too, try finding a roastery near you, buy a few freshly roasted beans and brew them really slowly - it tastes completely different from regular coffee.
Source: VnExpress
Daily Coffee News published a photo essay from the 2026 Roast Summit, hosted by Roast magazine at The Redd on Salmon Street in Portland, Oregon. The two-day event was sold out and brought hundreds of people from roasting, green coffee and equipment together, with coffee breaks, lunch and an evening happy hour and pub crawl.
On the talks side, Nicki Amouri of Caffè Amouri shared experiments on variables such as charge temperature and turnaround temperature. Laila Ghambari, owner of Guilder Coffee, talked about making cafes and roasteries more profitable, and Scott Merle of La Minita Coffee led a tasting session on how processing methods change the cup.
What I like most is the outdoor part: live roasting demonstrations on production roasters from San Franciscan, Loring, Diedrich and Sivetz, plus sample roasters including Roest, Aillio, Nucleus Link and Ikawa. Seeing different machines work side by side is hard to get any other way.
The Roast Summit began in Portland in 2020 and has since been held in Seattle, the Chicago area and Melbourne. The next one is set for March 2 and 3, 2027, in Melbourne. I would love to attend one someday, since hands-on events like this look far more useful than reading spec sheets.
Source: Daily Coffee News by Roast
I came across an article from Forbes Belgique that made me happy: Belgium has won the World Coffee Roasting Championship, six years after its last appearance. Benjamin Brassart claimed the title on June 27, 2026, at the World Coffee Fair in Brussels, ahead of the national champions of the other countries.
What struck me is his path. Only about two years ago, he launched Boo Coffee Roasters with his partner Benoît Desmaretz in the industrial district of Anderlecht. A small independent roastery working with committed producers has ended up on top of the world. It makes you want to believe in small operations.
The article also gives the floor to two professionals. Thomas Wyngaard, founder of OK Coffee Studio, believes the title will help specialty coffee be heard more in Belgian HORECA (hotels, restaurants and cafés). Maxime Lemploy of Cuprima, the specialty branch of the importer Efico, links this coffee to the slow food movement: rarity, distinctive taste, traceability.
A few figures put things in perspective. Specialty coffee accounts for only about 2% of the global market, even though it is growing much faster than the rest. In the United States, according to a survey by the Specialty Coffee Association, 47% of adults drink it every day, compared with 42% for traditional coffee. In Belgium there are no reliable consumption figures, but coffee shops keep opening in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and in Wallonia.
Wyngaard predicts that the market will polarize between very cheap coffee and excellence, with less and less room in the middle. Personally, I find that a useful reminder: behind a medal is a whole ecosystem of roasters, importers and producers who decide what ends up in our cup.
Source: Forbes Belgique
I read the news that Yoshiyuki Nakamura (47), who runs the coffee shop "Mame Porepore" in Okinawa City, won the Japan Coffee Roasting Championship. It was his third national win in this roasting competition held from December 2025 to January 2026, the most titles ever in this contest.
The competition tests skill in roasting green beans on a designated roaster. The assigned beans are announced on the day, and the judging covers three points: analysis of the beans, the quality of the roasted coffee, and how closely the roast matches the flavor the roaster declared in advance. Having to state the target taste in words first, and then reproduce it in practice, is what makes a roasting contest interesting.
Nakamura has run his shop for 16 years. He has reportedly placed as high as second at past world championships. He says there is no single right answer in roasting, and that it is important to draw out individuality while removing the defects in the beans. He also says that when something fails, analyzing the cause is what leads to the next step. As a home roaster, I found those words both uncomfortable and encouraging.
In June he will represent Japan at the world championship in Belgium, aiming for his first title on his third attempt. He also plans to travel abroad to practice on the same roaster that will be used in the final. The hope he expressed, "that winning the world title might be a chance to show people how high the level of Okinawan coffee is," also stayed with me.
It is genuinely pleasing to read how the quiet work of roasting builds into recognition for coffee in a region. I am curious about the world championship result too.
Source: Ryukyu Shimpo
I read a Perfect Daily Grind Español guide on keeping roasts consistent as volume grows, and I found its practical focus useful. The core idea is that consistency comes more from a stable, disciplined routine than from very precise profiles.
The author, Daniel Lancaster, who runs a roastery in Black Mountain, USA, starts with preheating, which should always be done the same way, at the same temperature and for the same length of time. He then asks you to control the moisture, density and temperature of the green coffee, and to log the humidity and temperature of the roasting room too, because all of these change heat transfer.
One part that caught my attention is the between-batch protocol: checking the cooling trays, removing the chaff, inspecting the drum and restarting the machine. According to the article, this stage explains most of the day-to-day variation, so reference profiles should include a reproducible protocol. He also recommends ordering the day's roasts from light and dense coffees to dark and less dense ones, forecasting volume from confirmed orders, and rotating green stock to keep it fresh.
Machine size matters too: a small one forces back-to-back batches with no recovery time, and a large one produces partial loads that behave differently. At Café Mokxa in France, they moved from a 12 kg roaster to a 60 kg one and saw fewer errors than when they did six 10 kg batches. The piece also recommends cupping at the start, middle and end of production.
A word of caution: the article is sponsored by IMF Roasters and promotes its equipment, so it's worth reading that part with some distance. Still, the routine advice applies to any roaster.
Source: Perfect Daily Grind Español
I was glad to hear that the Producer & Roaster Forum (PRF) is coming to Mexico for the first time. The 12th edition will run on 18 and 19 March 2027 at the Polyforum Chiapas in Tuxtla, and the Sourcing Trip experience will take place from 14 to 17 March.
More than 4,500 professionals are expected, with roasters from over 45 countries, which would make it the largest PRF so far. The organisers estimate more than 15.5 million US dollars in business opportunities, of which at least 1.82 million would stay in Chiapas, along with more than 300 direct and indirect jobs.
The programme includes the sixth Global Roasting Championship, sponsored by Cropster, the eighth Cold Brew Championship, the third World Cupping Championship and the third Suelo de Excelencia competition by Belco, which focuses on soil health. There will also be Producer-Roaster Matchmaking sessions, talks and panels (speaker applications are open), and the final of the Global Coffee Awards 2026, where regional winners compete for the title of best roaster in the world. The 2025 champion was Vytautas Kratulis of Huracán Coffee. The European edition of the GCA will be held in October, and samples must arrive before 21 October.
For context, Mexico is one of the world's eleven largest coffee exporters, and the USDA expects its production to rise to 4.1 million 60 kg bags in the 2026/27 harvest. Personally, I see this as a good sign for small Latin American roasters, who will have a meeting point much closer to home.
Source: Perfect Daily Grind Español
I came across some good news: Fábio Milan Pereira, roast master at Epamig (Minas Gerais' agricultural research company), won the 2026 Brazilian Roasting Championship. The competition took place from 6 to 8 May at the Coffee Trade Center of Minas Gerais in Varginha and was organized by the Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA).
The judges chose him for presenting the specialty coffee with the best sensory profile and for following the roasting plan he himself had presented most faithfully. That second criterion strikes me as very interesting, because it shows that roasting well also means planning and being able to repeat what you planned.
The detail that stands out most is his age. He is 21, studies agronomy at the Federal Institute of Machado, and has worked at Epamig for almost three years, roasting all the coffee produced at the Machado experimental field. It was only his second competition; at the end of April he finished second in the regional championship in Andradas. He comes from a coffee-growing family and at first thought about studying veterinary medicine, but his interest in coffee quality grew in study groups during his technical course.
According to him, the work of a roast master combines technical control of the machine with reading the characteristics of the bean. The plan involves inlet and outlet temperatures, yield, color, and sensory attributes such as sweetness, acidity and finish, and he tastes the coffee at least once before designing the competition roast.
The win secures his place to represent Brazil at the 2026 World Roasting Championship in Brussels in June. I'm rooting for more young people like him in the coffee world.
Source: Agrolink (Agricultura-MG)
Gambero Rosso has presented the 2026 Guida Caffè e Torrefazioni d'Italia, an updated map of the sector that brings together major brands, mid-sized roasters, craft roasteries and specialty labs. What caught my attention most was the evaluation method.
A panel of professional tasters sampled thousands of products in four preparation methods: espresso, moka, filter and single-serve. Every coffee was tasted blind, following standardized protocols. Ratings use a 'grinder' system: one grinder means fully satisfactory quality, two a step above, and three absolute excellence. Each product also gets a detailed card with a sensory map.
The guide also awards 15 Special Award Torrefazione prizes. Caffè Agust was named roastery of the year for the quality of its entire range; Cafezal Specialty Coffee Roasters won as a specialty roastery for its selection and roasting of arabica; Ditta Artigianale is the roastery of excellence, and Caffè Putto was recognized as a craft roastery. Lavazza received the sustainability award for its 100% green single-serve Tablì, and Caffè Pascucci the innovation award, thanks to a compostable capsule that can become fertilizer.
Some of the recognitions I find most charming are the one for Caffè Morettino, for the first real coffee plantation in Italy, and the one for Mokaflor, for its Coffee Academies spread across every continent. Kimbo is the gourmet roastery, Essse Caffè honors tradition with its Masini blend, and Bialetti was rewarded as the alternative coffee.
Personally, I find it useful that a guide puts giants and small artisans on the same list, with clear criteria. I would like to see how the evaluations evolve in future editions.
Source: QuiFinanza
I used to think roasting coffee was simply putting the beans in the machine, waiting the right number of minutes and taking them out. The more I learn, the more I see how oversimplified that is.
A real roast batch is a whole chain of decisions: preparing the green coffee, setting a goal, charging the beans, watching how the roast develops, developing the profile, ending the batch, cooling, checking the result and recording data. Every step affects the next batch.
What stuck with me most is the question you ask before switching the machine on: what is this batch for? Coffee for espresso differs from coffee for a phin filter, and a base for milk drinks differs from one for black coffee. Bigger beans aren't automatically better either; uniformity, bean condition and storage have to be considered together. The roaster is only a tool and can't "fix" differences already in the raw material.
That's also why there's no "standard" temperature or time. Numbers taken out of the context of the machine, batch size and beans are easily mistaken for a recipe. Instead of asking "how many minutes makes it taste good", ask "with these beans and this goal, how should the roast develop?"
Two more notes for myself: cooling is part of controlling the batch, because the beans keep changing if they aren't cooled properly; and you can't judge two batches as identical by colour alone, since the heat development before that may have been completely different.
For a home roaster like me, the lesson is to log every batch carefully. A good batch is only really worth something when you understand why it was good and can repeat it.
Source: C&C Coffee
Forbes België reported on news that caught my eye: after six years, Belgium has won the world coffee roasting title again. Benjamin Brassart became world champion on 27 June 2026 at the World of Coffee trade fair in Brussels.
Less than two years earlier, Brassart co-founded Boo Coffee Roasters with Benoît Desmaretz, an independent roastery in the industrial district of Anderlecht. They work with carefully selected beans from producers who take their responsibilities seriously. I find it quite remarkable that such a young roastery reached the world top so quickly.
The article also includes two people from the sector. Thomas Wyngaard of OK Coffee Studio says the title will give specialty coffee more weight in Belgian horeca (hotels, restaurants and cafés), although he expects the economic impact to be limited. Maxime Lemploy of Cuprima, the specialty division of importer Efico, links specialty coffee to the slow food trend: local products, transparency and fair prices for producers.
The numbers put things into perspective. Specialty coffee accounts for roughly 2 percent of the global coffee market, but it is growing much faster than the rest. According to a study by the Specialty Coffee Association, 47 percent of American adults drink specialty coffee every day, compared with 42 percent who drink traditional coffee. There are no reliable consumption figures yet for Belgium, but coffee bars keep multiplying, especially in Brussels and Antwerp.
Wyngaard expects a split: cheap mass-market coffee on one side, top quality on the other, and a smaller middle segment. We are also seeing traditional importers increasingly take over specialty importers. I am curious to see how that will change the coffee in our cups in the coming years.
Source: Forbes België
An experiment in New Mexico asks a question I had not thought about: can an ordinary drum coffee roaster run on solar energy stored as heat? Daily Coffee News reports that Sandia National Laboratories tested the idea with Albuquerque roaster Michael Thomas Coffee.
The setup works like this. Photovoltaic panels make electricity, which is converted to heat and stored in a bed of rocks. When needed, the stored heat is released into the roasting drum, a process Sandia systems engineer Ken Armijo calls indirect solar heating. The system roasted light, medium and dark coffees, with temperatures reaching as high as 600 degrees Celsius, and trimmed a few minutes off a dark roast.
Owner Michael Sweeney pointed to faster turnaround, since the system lets the roaster preheat and cool more quickly between batches, which could raise daily output. The rock bed can hold heat for a long time, potentially days, so roasting could continue when the sun is not shining. Albuquerque was chosen for its roughly 300 sunny days a year.
The long-term goal is a bolt-on kit for existing natural gas roasters, so shops would not have to replace machines. Sandia describes the project as a proof of concept that could greatly reduce natural gas use. Earlier work in 2022 used concentrated sunlight to roast green chile and, according to Sandia, halved the roasting time.
The project is funded through New Mexico's Technology Readiness Gross Receipts Initiative and runs under a cooperative research agreement, using Sandia thermal storage technology under a US patent. I am curious how it handles roast profile control, which the article does not detail.
Source: Daily Coffee News
Perfect Daily Grind has a piece on how roasters can build a reputation beyond their home market, told through Huracán Coffee of Vilnius, Lithuania. Founded in 1999 as the country's first specialty roaster, Huracán was named World's Best Roaster at the 2025 Global Coffee Awards World Championship in El Salvador. The awards drew more than 2,000 samples from over 125 countries, and only 30 roasters from 16 countries reached the final round, judged blind.
Founder Vytautas Kratulis says the first step is mastering your own market, which can take years, and understanding the community while still introducing coffees people have not learned to enjoy yet. Copying competitors is not enough; distinctiveness comes from a clear point of view, for example sourcing from less familiar origins. In his words, competitions give international credibility while events create international relationships.
Six months after the win, customers were finding Huracán from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Romania, with relationships developing in the UK, Sweden, Spain and Portugal. The roastery also works with partners such as the dripper maker Shelbru and sells an instant coffee called Huracán Scout.
The risk he names is dilution: small adjustments to roast profiles or product ranges can make a brand easier to sell but harder to recognize. I found that a thoughtful warning. Lithuania has only around 30 roasters, so a small market clearly does not have to limit a roaster's ambitions.
Source: Perfect Daily Grind
