We sell consumer packages of 12 ounces and 5 pounds of the Rivers Bend Coffee Roasters brand. We can provide specialized roasting and blends for our clients who use private labels. Get in touch with us if you want to buy our brand or collaborate with us to create your own unique mixes or single origins! Our passion is the same as yours. Our lab has espresso, drip, manual brew, and top-notch sample roasting and cupping equipment. This gives us a top-notch training environment, allows us to taste coffee effectively, and helps us create blends and profiles.
Rivers BendCoffee Roasters’ whole process, from selecting the raw beans to roasting them, is focused on maintaining the coffee’s inherent quality at the grower level. To identify the optimum way to use them in blends or for our single origins, we investigate through sample roasting and cupping. A tiny amount of quality is lost whenever even one step of the production process is compromised. Our main goal is to ensure that every stage is managed to the highest standard.
We are eager to collaborate with you!
Frequently Ask Questions
The short answer is between 90-150mg of caffeine per 8oz cup. This is due to differences in brewing technique and the conditions in which the coffee was grown. Longer extraction times will more fully dissolve the caffeine in the coffee and raise the caffeine content of the beverage. The other reason caffeine continent varies is due to the type of coffee being grown and its location. Caffeine is the plant’s natural defense against insects. Varieties of coffee that have adapted to harsher environments may contain higher levels of caffeine as a survival response. Elevation may also play a role in caffeine content. Coffee grown at higher elevations matures more slowly and may not be subjected to as much pressure from insects leading to lower levels of caffeine. One common myth is that the roast level affects the caffeine content in the cup. The melting point of caffeine is 480 degrees fahrenheit, well above the finish temperature of even the darkest of roasts. This means that, bean for bean, there is no difference in caffeine content between light and dark roasts. The difference in caffeine content attributed to roasting is actually a measuring issue. Light roast coffee is smaller and heavier than dark roasted coffee. If you were to weigh your coffee you would find that there would be more beans in the dark sample than the light sample so more caffeine in the dark roasted cup. If you were to measure using a scoop you would find more beans in the light sample than the dark sample so more caffeine in the light roasted cup. So what does all this mean to you? Well it turns out not much. The difference in the caffeine content, no matter where it comes from, how it’s roasted, or how it’s brewed, is only 5-10mg when using the same beans and isn’t enough of a difference for most people to perceive. What’s the take away? If you’re looking for more caffeine then just have another cup and drink what you like!
We work closely with importers to source our coffee from specialty coffee growers around the world. Quality is of the utmost importance here at Rivers Bend and we strive to bring that quality to our customers. It is for this reason that we have a strict evaluation process for selecting the perfect beans for our single origin and blend offerings. Each origin offers something different so we try to provide a wide variety of offerings to satisfy even the pickiest of coffee drinkers. We may be biased but we think you should be buying coffee from Rivers Bend to ensure you are getting the freshest, and finest quality coffee for your brew. However, if you are in a pinch and want to know how to tell if the coffee is going to be good, here are a few tips: buy from a specialty coffee roaster or a specialty coffee shop. If you can, try to avoid buying coffee from the supermarket. They tend to have best buy dates that are up to 6 months from the time it was roasted making the coffee quite old when it makes it to the shelf.
This is a tricky question. The answer that we typically give is to use your coffee in the first two weeks after roasting and to buy smaller amounts more often. For some this is inconvenient and they prefer to stock up to save some time and money. One solution to this problem would be to become a member of our coffee family and have coffee automatically delivered to your door as often as you would like. Another solution is to store coffee in an airtight opaque container at room temperature. Coffee stored this way will oxidize more slowly and preserve more of the aroma in the bean. When storing coffee this way you can expect up to 6 weeks of good coffee flavor before it starts to fade. If you are wanting to store coffee for a longer period of time, perhaps a Kona you brought back from vacation and would like to share at the holidays, can be stored in the freezer so long as the bag has not been opened. If you put coffee in the freezer it will fade faster than on the counter but will become stable around the 6 week mark and will stay relatively the same quality indefinitely.
The best practice is to grind your coffee as close to the time you will be brewing as possible. As soon as coffee is ground it begins to off gas, causing it to lose its aroma, and begin to oxidize. Once this process of oxidation begins the coffee will quickly stale and become flat in the cup. For best results use fresh roasted coffee and a burr grinder to grind your coffee just before brewing. This will give you the best possible coffee experience you can get at home.
There are two main species of coffee, Arabica and Robusta. The specialty coffee roaster typically only uses high grade Arabica beans for their offerings with the exception that some roasters will add some robusta to their espresso blends to potentially increase the crema when pulling shots. Ethiopia is thought to be the birthplace of coffee and all modern varieties come from selecting new stock from the best producing coffees in a particular region. This is why we have many different varieties of Arabica coffee. Within the Arabica species there are many varieties or cultivars. Some of the most common are Bourbon, Catura, Geisha, Mondo Novo, Catui, Heirloom, and Typicas. Each variety has its own character and depending on environmental conditions, different flavors can be achieved even within the same varieties. Think Roma tomatoes grown in Italy vs chile. They could be grown from the same seed and taste very different. Everything from the soil, altitude, rainfall, average temperature, and processing method can impact the flavor of a coffee. So how many different coffees are there? Hundreds of varieties and countless variations mean there are an almost infinite number of coffees. Lucky for you we have 20 years of experience selecting the best coffees from the best farms so you can rest easy knowing you are getting the finest quality coffee around.
The short answer is that I prefer to drink east african coffee most of the time. For me it tends to have a wide range of flavor characteristics that make the experience a little more interesting. That said, I like different coffees for different things. Some brew methods lend themselves to different coffees in more preferable ways than others. Cold brew for example is in my opinion made with lower acidity coffee is better than a bright or dark roast coffee so I like a mellow central american coffee from places like Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia. When brewing espresso I think that a balanced blend of beans is the way to go. Honestly there is no right bean for an application other than the one you like. We encourage you to experiment with different brew methods and bean combinations to come up with your own unique spin on our coffees. Drop us a message if you think you have a winner and we want to know about it!
These terms refer to the process that the coffee goes through after it has been picked and is called wet milling and dry milling. Natural means that the coffee has been picked and dried straight from the tree without going through the wet milling process. The outer skin of the off called the cherry is left on the beans while it dries giving it some fruity, floral, and citrus flavors. Pulp Natural is the same process except that the cherry skins are removed and then the coffee goes to the drying stage. This can give the coffee similar flavors to the natural process but tend to be less intense. The washed process is when the coffee that has been pulped removing the cherry skin is then either put into a wash tank and left to soak or run through a mechanical demucilager in order to remove a layer of sugary mucilage from the remaining bean. From there the coffee is sent to the drying phase. This gives the coffee a mild clean flavor and possibly lower acidity.
This is another tricky question and the short answer is the best way is whatever way you like it best. We will be adding some brewing guidelines in another section if you are looking for a starting point or are interested in getting into new brewing methods.