Journal on Midnight Bloom Coffee

A Darker Roast, On Purpose

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:00:00 -0800

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 do.

A customer asked for something specific: low acidity, and an espresso that pulls creamy. Not a flaw to hide, just a preference. That request points in one direction, and it isn’t our usual one.

Understanding Coffee Roast Phases

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 10:00:00 -0800

A walk through the roasting process using actual logged curves, phase by phase, from drying to development.

Roasting on Vashon Island

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0800

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

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0800

This month’s profile work, what the logged curves show, and what’s arriving in October.

Understanding Geisha Coffee

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 14:00:00 -0800

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 comes from

The variety, spelled Geisha or Gesha depending on who is selling it, originated in the Gori Gesha forest in Ethiopia, where it grew wild before anyone was propagating it deliberately. It is genetically distinct from most other arabica varieties, and that distinctiveness is the reason it keeps its character across very different growing regions. A Gesha grown in Panama still tastes recognisably like Gesha.

What a Roasting Day Actually Looks Like

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 16:00:00 -0800

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 carries heat between batches, so you sequence from lighter profiles up to darker ones rather than trying to drag temperature back down mid-session.

Then the green gets checked. Moisture content should sit around 10–12%; anything higher and the drying phase needs extending or the batch will finish uneven. Density matters too, because dense high-grown coffee absorbs heat differently from softer lowland beans, and the same profile applied to both produces two different results.

Coffee After Dark, Without Wrecking Your Sleep

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 22:30:00 -0800

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 range across individuals is wide. Genetics, liver enzyme activity, hormonal contraceptives, and smoking all shift it, and the spread runs from about two hours to over nine.

Take the middle of that range. A strong cup at 9 pm still has roughly half its caffeine circulating at 3 am, and a quarter at 9 am the next morning. That’s why “I can fall asleep after coffee” and “coffee doesn’t affect my sleep” are different claims. Sleep onset is often fine; what degrades is slow-wave sleep, and you don’t perceive that directly. You just feel unaccountably flat the next day.