Midnight Bloom Coffee
Journal
Roasting notes, coffee science, and occasional dispatches from an island roastery.
Written when there’s something worth writing down: a batch that taught us something, a variety worth explaining properly, or a month’s worth of notes from the roaster. No schedule. If you’d rather not check back, the mailing list sends a note when something new goes up.
A Washed Yemen Landed
Two boxes came off the Royal spot list this week. One is a honey-processed Uganda from the Rwenzori range. The other is a washed Yemen from the Sharqi Haraz Cooperative, and that one is the reason for this post. Neither …
A Darker Roast, On Purpose
Almost everything on our roster is roasted light to medium, because that’s what keeps origin character in the cup. So this is the exception, and it’s worth writing up because it shows what the roast alone can …
Understanding Coffee Roast Phases
A walk through the roasting process using actual logged curves, phase by phase, from drying to development.
Roasting on Vashon Island
What running a roastery on an island near Seattle changes about the work, from ferry logistics to how long we spend on a profile.
Why We Only Roast Single-Origin Coffee
Every batch we roast is one lot. What that buys, what it costs, and why we’re not planning to blend.
Roasting Notes: September 2025
This month’s profile work, what the logged curves show, and what’s arriving in October.
Understanding Geisha Coffee
Geisha is the variety people mean when they talk about a coffee that tastes like tea and costs like wine. Most of the reputation is deserved. Some of it is auction theatre. Here is what’s underneath it. Where it …
What a Roasting Day Actually Looks Like
Roasting looks like a craft from the outside and mostly feels like process control from the inside. Before anything is hot The first decision is which lots to run and in what order. This isn’t arbitrary. The drum …
Coffee After Dark, Without Wrecking Your Sleep
Given the name, we get asked about evening coffee fairly often. The answer is less about beans than about pharmacokinetics. The half-life problem Caffeine’s half-life in most adults is five to six hours, though the …