Tasting Notes: Apricot, Lemon, & Jasmine Coffee Components: Washed Ethiopia & Brazil 100% Specialty Grade Arabica Coffee Beans A great lighter roasted coffee, ideal for those who enjoy a more fruit forward blend. A blend that was created for those embracing the outdoor lifestyle of the Midwest. Unsalted with a resilient spirit. It will weather the waves or the squalls. Like wine, coffee is an agricultural product; its final taste subject to climate, altitude, cultivation methods, plant variety, picking techniques, and other factors. It’s also seasonal, and the best coffees are only available in limited supply. In order to share the best coffees with you, we put a great deal of effort into sourcing – that is, finding and procuring – our coffee beans. If selecting the right beans for the Roastery sounds like a complicated process, that’s because it is. It requires continually building and maintaining relationships. With farmers. With co-ops. With importers and exporters. And then there’s researching, evaluating, and cupping. We participate in auctions where we cup the best coffees of a particular region, and then live bid against other roasters from around the world for the best lots. Once new samples arrive in our building, we get even pickier, examining every bean, roasting test batches, and rejecting far more samples than we purchase. We reject anything that doesn’t meet our standards. We think you’ll taste the difference. So we believe it’s worth the effort. At The Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company, we roast all our coffees on custom-modified drum roasters with precise temperature controls and measurements. As a true micro-roaster, one of our strengths is our attention to detail and our ability to adjust to the needs and demands of our customers; a generally educated and awesome group of people. Some beans can take the fiery flames of a dark roast and still maintain their complexity. For others, we do a lighter roast so to protect the beans’ floral character and sweetness. Still others are agnostic to roast and will develop splendidly at any color. Every batch is meticulously monitored for temperature during the roast, analyzed for color after, and logged so we can go back and continually adapt our processes. We love what we do, so we do it with passion, and we continually strive for excellence. Since we’re into coffee in its many forms, we offer a constantly changing palette, a smorgasbord really, of single-origins, blends, and roast levels. We think they’re pretty good, but that’s a subjective thing – so we invite you to join the ongoing conversation about taste and what defines a truly great coffee.