Software technology professionals changed career and opened Micro-roastery in Bolivia
Discover the captivating story of Elevate Coffee Bolivia, a unique micro-roastery situated in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Co-founded by Clifford and Veruschka Stevens, Elevate Coffee Bolivia is on a mission to create awareness and appreciation for the extraordinary specialty coffee of Bolivia, while honoring the dedicated farmers who cultivate it. With their unwavering commitment to quality, personalized service, and the recent acquisition of the ROEST sample roaster, Elevate Coffee Bolivia is revolutionizing the coffee experience for enthusiasts worldwide.
When it comes to specialty coffee, Elevate Coffee Bolivia stands out as a unique and authentic micro-roastery located in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Founded by Clifford and Veruschka Stevens, Elevate Coffee Bolivia has been on a mission to raise awareness and appreciation for Bolivia's extraordinary specialty coffee and the dedicated farmers who cultivate it. With their commitment to quality, personalized service, and the recent acquisition of the ROEST sample roaster, Elevate Coffee Bolivia is revolutionizing the coffee experience for enthusiasts worldwide.
Staying Small, Focused, and Impactful
Elevate Coffee Bolivia distinguishes itself by intentionally remaining small and focused. The micro-roastery and coffee tasting room offers a cozy atmosphere where customers can savor the true essence of specialty coffee. Their menu may be small, but it has an impressive selection of 10+/- extraordinary, freshly roasted specialty coffee beans. Elevate's commitment to quality extends beyond their products and into how they treat their customers and team members, fostering positive energy, respect, and personalized attention.
Passion Ignites a Coffee Journey
Clifford and Veruschka Stevens, former internet/software technology professionals, and entrepreneurs, followed their passion for specialty coffee and embarked on a new adventure. Leaving behind their previous careers, they set out to create a unique coffee experience in Cochabamba. Their deep connection to Veruschka's hometown and the opportunity to work directly with local producers propelled them to establish Elevate Coffee Bolivia.
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The ROEST Sample Roaster: Expanding Horizons
Elevate Coffee Bolivia's dedication to enhancing the coffee journey led them to invest in the ROEST sample roaster. This state-of-the-art equipment provides them with infinite roast profiling control, real-time interaction, and ease of use. The ROEST's cloud-based software allows them to store and recall roast profiles, ensuring consistent quality and customization for their customers. With the ROEST, Elevate Coffee Bolivia can quickly sample roast small batches, explore new flavors, and push the boundaries of its coffee's potential.
“ROEST has expanded our coffee potential while making us uniquely useful to others in the local coffee community. With ROEST we now help others explore the potential of their coffees too. All from the comfort of my own home.”
Unleashing the Potential with ROEST
The addition of the ROEST sample roaster has revolutionized Elevate Coffee Bolivia's coffee journey. It has enabled them to delve deeper into the complexities and nuances of their coffees. By having a dedicated sample roaster, they can focus on production roasting while still experimenting with small batches. Elevate Coffee Bolivia can now offer its customers an expanded range of coffee flavors and experiences. Furthermore, they can extend their expertise to the local coffee community, helping other enthusiasts explore and unlock the potential of their own coffees.
Roasting Philosophy: Letting the Coffee Shine
Elevate Coffee Bolivia takes a hands-on approach to roasting, allowing each coffee to guide them towards its highest feasible expression. Their lighter-to-medium roast style emphasizes variety, complexity, and roast-defect-free drinking enjoyment. By listening to the coffee and leveraging their experience, they craft roast profiles that highlight the unique characteristics of each coffee, resulting in a truly remarkable and memorable cup.
“With ROEST, we can dynamically, easily, quickly, and effectively roast so many small batches of coffee in such a short amount of time.”
Advice for Coffee Enthusiasts
Clifford Stevens, Head Roaster of Elevate Coffee Bolivia, emphasizes the importance of humility, patience, and objectivity in the cupping process. Cupping frequently, sharing experiences with others, and maintaining consistent methods and standards are key to growth and development. Clifford encourages coffee enthusiasts to have fun, embrace exploration, and always remember that it's just coffee—albeit a truly remarkable and inspiring beverage.
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Photo credit: Clifford Stevens - Elevate Coffee Bolivia
Micro-Roasting Mastery: Customer Success Story ft. Baristatus Co.
Baristatus Co are coffee explorers dedicated to unlocking excellence with the ROEST sample roaster. With their non-profit model and three special categories, they curate the best coffees for enthusiasts worldwide. The ROEST empowers them to achieve precision, experiment, and fuel their growth. Join the revolution and elevate your coffee experience.
Baristatus Co, led by founder Hasim Solmaz, is not your ordinary coffee company. They see themselves as explorers, embarking on a relentless pursuit of the best award-winning coffee beans, top-notch roasters, and experimental micro-lots. Their endless journey brings forth the most precious and authentic coffee experiences tailored to coffee enthusiasts everywhere.
A Unique Business Concept and Vision
Baristatus stands out from the crowd with its non-profit business model, focused on making the best coffees available to their fellow coffee lovers. They curate their offerings in three special categories: Exotic, Experimental, and Excellence. As the first and only Alliance of Coffee Excellence (ACE) and Cup of Excellence member, Baristatus is dedicated to supplying exceptional coffee collections globally.
Baristatus has a unique coffee selection for true coffee enthusiasts. They recently won the bid and purchased the Costa Rica Cup of Excellence 2022 No#1A, Honey Gesha.
Exceptional coffee experience tailored to each customer
Every ROEST roaster has its own unique name based on a place in Norway.
Baristatus Co's commitment to quality and personalized service led them to choose the ROEST sample roaster as an essential tool in their coffee roasting operations. With the ROEST, they achieve the precision and control required to maintain their high-potential coffee beans' utmost quality and consistency. This aligns perfectly with their vision of delivering an exceptional coffee experience tailored to their customer's preferences.
Fueling Growth and Success
The ROEST sample roaster has been instrumental in driving the growth and success of Baristatus. Previously, they relied on bigger commercial-sized roasters, limiting their ability to offer the freshest coffee within optimal timeframes. “Since we are dealing with nano-lots, commercial-size roasters -even 1kg capacity ones- are too big for us to roast our special coffees,“ explains Hasim.
Thanks to the ROEST, they can now make small test batches, iterate on their recipes, and maintain complete control over the roasting process. This has empowered them to expand their offerings and delight coffee enthusiasts with exceptional coffees.
“High-potential beans require higher control, repeatability, and consistency. ROEST is giving it all to us! We can repeat our recipes every time without any hesitation; several back-to-back roasts and the same consistency.”
Elevating Expertise and Collaboration
The ROEST sample roaster creates a new sense of collaboration within the coffee community. Through the ROEST forum and library, Baristatus exchanges recipes, develops innovative techniques, and shares feedback with other Alliance for Coffee Excellence members.
The continuous updates and features of the ROEST have further enriched their roasting experience and deepened their knowledge: “Being IOT based high-tech device, every morning ROEST can surprise you with a new value-added feature! When I first purchased it, it was up to 120 grams, and now I can roast with the same roaster up to 200 grams! Or Between Batch Protocol is a completely new and quite useful tool that we got for free from any of these usual updates.“
Empowering Micro-Roasting Businesses
The ROEST sample roaster is a game-changer for those starting a micro-roasting business. Its compact size and exceptional precision make it an ideal choice for handling small batch sizes, varietals, and experimental processes. With the ROEST, micro-roasters can confidently roast the best beans and deliver extraordinary coffee experiences like Baristatus.
“Our Baristatus nano-roastery allows us to process the best beans; this would never happen with commercial-size roasting machines. With full confidence, we are now able to handle different varietals, processes, and batch sizes up to 200 grams!”
If you're passionate about coffee and seeking to elevate your roasting game, the ROEST sample roaster is the perfect ally. Talk to our team to find out more about this sample roaster.
To learn more about Baristatus Co and their coffee offerings, visit their website and join them in celebrating the artistry and excellence of coffee.
Photo credit for this blog: Baristatus Co
Sample roasting for the World Stage
Competing in the World Coffee Championship (WCC) is no small feat. It requires meticulous preparation, including careful coffee selection and precise roasting. For Kamila Chobotova, Alexander Monsen, Mariam Erin and Martin Wolfl, the ROEST Sample Roaster played a crucial role in their journey to the world stage. This is how the ROEST helped them excel in the competition.
Competing in the World Coffee Championship (WCC) is no small feat. It requires meticulous preparation, including careful coffee selection and precise roasting. For Kamila Chobotova (CZ), Alexander Monsen (NO), Mariam Erin (UAE) and Martin Wolfl (AU), the ROEST Sample Roaster played a crucial role in their journey to the world stage. Let's explore how the ROEST helped them excel in the competition.
Exploring flavor potential, roasting mastery, and aspiring for consistency
Photo credit: Kamila Chobotova, Doubleshot (CZ)
Kamila Chobotova, a talented barista, and competitor, who made it this year to the semi-finals, embarked on her WBrC 2023 journey with a clear vision. She initially reserved several geisha lots from the Rodriguez family's Alasitas farm in Bolivia. These lots underwent different fermentation methods, allowing Kamila to explore the coffee's flavor potential. However, after various roasts and cuppings, she opted for a fresh crop Panamanian geisha from Graciano Cruz for the WBrC.
Using the ROEST Sample Roaster, Kamila and her team could experiment with different roast profiles and fine-tune the coffee to perfection. With the flexibility of the ROEST, they roasted several batches of the chosen profile, monitoring the coffee's aging process over 1 to 3 weeks.
Kamila Chobotova from Doubleshot, representing the Czech Republic, made it to the World Brewers Cup 2023 semi-finals in Athens. Photo credit: World Coffee Events
“The beta function BT/IT profiling* is pretty amazing … and a total game changer regarding consistency. Can’t really wait for the bigger Roest machine, which we would like to use as our production roaster for limited edition coffees and competition roasts.”
* Bean temperature vs. Inlet temperature feature will be released in July 2023
Discovering the perfect roast for WBC
Alexander Monsen's coffee selection process for the WBC 2023 involved contacting Juan Suarez from Nordic Approach, who connected him with the La Isleta farm in Antioquia, managed by Juan Carlos Velez. With the ROEST Sample Roaster, Alexander could roast the mechanically natural processed Caturra variety from La Isleta according to his desired profile. The ROEST's control and flexibility allowed him to experiment with roast times and temperatures, resulting in the ideal balance of sweetness and acidity in his competition's coffee.
Alexander Monsen, representing Norway, at the World Stage in Athens.
“Roasting coffee for the WBC and finding the right roast profile has never been easier. So much available information on the web, plug and play. ROEST is simply the best roaster ever!”
Martin Wolfl on the World Stage during the WBrC 2022, representing Austria.
Martin Wolfl approached coffee selection for the WBrC 2022, focusing on learning, growth, and honoring the producers. Through his friend Rodolfo Ruffatti Battle from Productor Coffee, he discovered the "Juana natural" coffee from Finca Juana in El Salvador. With the ROEST Sample Roaster, Martin explored different roast profiles for this unique coffee. Highlighting its extraordinary flavors and paying homage to the late Juana Salvadora Barrientos, the farm's organic and nature-based approach.
It was a great pleasure to watch Mariam Erin back on the World Stage this year, representing UAE in the Ibrik category. During her presentation, she shared the details of the roasted coffee on ROEST to reach desired flavors. We were thrilled to see her win third place at the World Cezve/Ibrik Championship.
Photo credit: Mariam Erin
“And like what we push and advocate in world coffee championships, it will always go down to the quality of the cup and the purpose of service behind it. And I hope with this opportunity, I could encourage at least one person to appreciate and try Cezve or compete and showcase their creativity through Cezve,“ concluded Mariam.
Photo credit: Mariam Erin
The ultimate roaster for coffee competitors
The ROEST Sample Roaster proved invaluable for these competitors, offering precise control and the ability to replicate roasts with minimal waste. The roasting profiles developed on the ROEST enabled them to maximize the potential of their competition's coffees.
The competitors found distinct advantages when comparing the roasting experience on a sample roaster, like the ROEST, versus a production roaster. The ROEST allowed them complete control over the roasting process and experimented with profiles without wasting large quantities of coffee. This level of control was particularly crucial for competitions, where consistency and precision are paramount. Additionally, the small batch sizes provided by the ROEST allowed for a more manageable and less stressful roasting experience.
The ROEST Sample Roaster was a game-changer for these competitors' preparation and coffee selection process. Its ease of use, consistency, and control allowed them to explore various roast profiles, fine-tune the flavors of their coffees, and ultimately present exceptional brews on the world stage.
Are you competing next year?
Are you competing next year at the World Stage and do you need a sample roaster? At ROEST, we understand how important it is to get the most out of your coffee and not to waste a single bean. Let us know - we are happy to help you!