Or sweet, or strong – we like all kinds of coffee and all kinds of jazz and we’ve got it all here at Eastside Radio thanks to the amazing musicians for supplying the jazz and our friends at The Coffee Roaster for supplying the coffee.

Being an avid coffee drinker from New York, I thought I was a part of a huge coffee culture. That was of course until I came to Australia to find that we were the small fish compared to the Aussies in the coffee culture sea. Alongside some of Eastside’s wonderful presenters I went to The Coffee Roaster in Alexandria to meet the people who supply me with my daily fix every day at the station. I left with a ton of new knowledge about the coffee roasting process and a whole 1kg bag of coffee beans that I got to roast myself!

I was unaware of how detailed the process of roasting coffee beans was, seeing the behind the scenes of it all and having the intricate process explained to us made it feel like I was in a science lab. A lot of thought is put into roasting coffee and creativity comes in to play when creating different blends. The taste varies depending on the origin of the bean; some smooth, some sweet, some strong and others somewhere in between the three.

The dark brown beans we all know and love start out as a greenish color, varying in shades depending on its strength, but nonetheless are not brown from the very beginning. Once the beans are put into the roaster, the top protective layer of the bean is shed and sucked up out of the machine and the beans are free to roast and turn that beautiful brown color.

I got to taste a plethora of coffee blends and roast my very own coffee beans that will hopefully not be taken away from me at customs upon my return back into the states. We dove right into the experience and had a great time; thank you to our friends at The Coffee Roaster for the knowledge and the delicious coffee!