Coffee beans for the office

Date Posted:5 October 2013 

Coffee beans vary considerably
This article explains how super automatic coffee machines in the office require a focused type of fresh roasted coffee beans in order to produce the best results.

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Office Coffee Beans Suppliers

We are a major supplier of office coffee beans for the Australian corporate and business office environment.

We supply coffee for automatic coffee machines in particular, such as our Superauto coffee blends range made especially for those types of espresso coffee machines.

Over the last 9 years, we have been roasting coffee for a number of dedicated 3rd party office coffee providers and through our relationships and feedback we have finely tuned and optimised our coffees to suit this particular market segment.

There are a few things to consider when buying office coffee. The first is really the brew method that you and your staff prefer. We can supply filter coffee beans, nespresso compatible espresso coffee capsules, ESE coffee pods or even the best instant coffee.

Cafe coffees are roasted specifically for 2 different target points - the old-school dark roast for the shopping centre commercial cafe customer and the lighter hipster-style coffee prepared for inner-city specialty cafes.

Both of these styles of cafe coffee beans do not work effectively in the sort of Automatic espresso coffee machines installed in office environments.

Why Is Office Coffee Different To Cafe Coffee?

Here's why.......

Let's take the volume-based cafe provider - these are the coffee companies obsessed with having their brand plastered all over a cafe - wind barriers, signs, umbrellas, cups, uniforms, etc.

They mass-produce coffee in production volumes intended for stocking warehouse shelves and have an almost zero ability to control freshness (and therefore the ultimate quality).

The decision process used by volume cafe coffee providers when purchasing or sourcing their green beans is based on just one simple criteria - fit within a low-cost budget - they try their very best to buy coffee cheaply and that invariably means they are happy to take the stuff that many of the careful and selective coffee roasters reject.

These cheap coffee beans are roasted darker into some type of homogonised coffee, dark, oily and with slightly bitter taints. It is not a lack of skill or care, it's a deliberate act to suit commercial espresso machine extraction using plenty of milk to sweeten and balance the background bite (bitter) taints.

Using these dark roasted, low-grade coffee beans on your office automatic machine will generally result in a bland coffee that lacks sweetness and complexity. Sure, it has what might resemble coffee attributes, but that bite is acutually a bitterness taint being masked in some rancid caramel/malt extraction.

Bulk cafe style coffees tend to be very stale when offered to an Office coffee customer as it's generally excess inventory that is being offloaded cheaply to 3rd party suppliers.

This means that oils which should be trapped inside the bean will have already formed on the surface of the coffee beans creating rancid taints when exposed to oxygen. This is exactly what happens to any food oils or fats when exposed to oxygen - they go rancid.

If you open a pack of coffee beans and they are oily - my advice is to tip the beans into the bin.

Running stale, oily beans through an office automatic espresso coffee machine is only inviting problems.

The excessive oil from the over-roasting and/or stale coffee will stick to the small burrs on the built-in grinder of the office automatic espresso machine and basically clogs the grinder (gumming) causing taints from rancid ground coffee to stick to the oils and exposed to oxygen.

What you end up with is a bitter taint of varying intensity that spoils the quality of every cup of coffee made on the office automatic espresso machine - until it is professionally cleaned (which can cost hundreds of dollars).

The majority of Office Suppliers (that is the providers of stationary and other services) who also offer coffee tend to supply only cheap, low-grade and stale coffee beans at over-inflated prices.

What I am referring to here are the All-In-One office suppliers who think roasted coffee beans are the same as notepads, pens and staples - they have no idea about coffee being a fresh food and no processes in place to manage the age of coffee beans that will have been sitting on their warehouse shelves for some time.

As these office supply companies do not roast coffee beans themselves and rely upon paying cheap prices to volume contract roasting companies for excess inventory that is likely to be at or beyond the peak usage window for the roasted coffee beans.

At the other end of the scale is the over-pretentious specialty coffee companies who think they can roast better than anyone else and charge twice as much for their coffee.

Mostly, these Specialty coffee companies roast too light because they are used to providing cafe who use 21g filter baskets dosed up to 24g pulling super-tight double ristretto extractions that are being sold for $4 a cup.

When you pour these light-roasted specialty coffees into the hopper of your Office Automatic Espresso machine, my guess is you will be disappointed...........

Why?

Because the Specialty, ultra-pretentious, love-me-do, artisan hand-crafted coffee beans lightly roasted are sour and weak - lacking flavor, body, sweetness and a lingering finish.

The lightly roasted coffee beans have not adequately developed enough of the sugars (caramelisation) in the roasting process, so that when they are low-dosed in an Office Automatic Espresso Machine at anywhere between 7 and 12g, they do not produce an enjoyable or realistic espresso.

What I have described here are not two separate extremes of the roasted coffee bean market - they are two of the most common styles for cafes - dark, full flavoured or light, sweet and fruity.

Either way, they just don't work in the office automatic espresso coffee machine - therefore a different approach is required for home and office coffee beans.

We have researched and tested numerous roast profiles and blend compositions over many years.

Now, we have really perfected the Office Coffee Bean supply with our Super Auto blend.

Engineered to have the precise level of roast depth to produce flavor without the excessive oils, this coffee is a breakthrough in modern coffee roasting and blending techniques.

And the best part is we sell this premium grade coffee for just $23 a kilo plus postage.

It is roasted every 2nd night (3 or 4 times a week) so you can be assured the coffee that is despatched from our roastery is within 48hrs of roasting - so it's ultra-fresh.

Whichever coffee beans online from us that you order, you will be happy with, we are sure.