Roaster Summer School. July 15-18, 2024, Basel
Next July, together with Ingo Albrecht from the Roast Rebels, we invite you to the Roaster Summer School. Over four days, we will conduct 16 workshops on roasting, green coffee, founding a business, communication, and sensory skills. The workshops are for everyone who already roasts, wants to further develop their skills, seeks exchange with others, and is considering starting their own roastery.
Background
"Come on, let's do something bigger together," Ingo said during a visit to Basel. We've just shot two videos, one about home roasting, and another about tips and tricks for roasting with the Aillio Bullet.
We met in 2018 at the first Swiss Roasting Championship, when Ingo was volunteering and we were hosting as Kaffeemacher at our former location in Münchenstein. Ingo focused early on home roasting, smaller roasting machines, sample roasting, and making roasting simply accessible to everyone.
Ingo Albrecht and Philipp Schallberger
We started offering roasting courses back then and sharing our practical knowledge. We've been in continuous exchange since, because we both work with roasting, essentially do the same thing, but on different scales. And that brings a wonderful tension with it - even though it's the same thing, there are indeed differences when we talk about proportions, air supply, temperatures, green coffees, and so on.
So in this Summer School we want to bring together our two worlds and pass on exactly these experiences to the participants; one topic, different perspectives.
Format
We'll take over our academy in Basel for four days. We'll set up various roasting machines - Aillio Bullets, Giesen 1kg roasters, and sample roasters from Nucleus Link.
Each day centers on one topic, which we'll discuss through four workshops each. The format will always be a mix of theory, practice, and exchange. Open exchange in a small group helps tremendously to make rapid progress and gain new insights.
So we encourage you to bring your own questions so we can discuss them together in the group.
Monday, July 15, 2024
On Monday, everything revolves around roasting. It's about roast profiles for different markets and beverages, fine interpretations for espresso and filter coffee, as well as coffee for automatic machines.
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
On Tuesday, we focus on the raw product, green coffee. We roast samples, taste various coffees, and discuss what beverages and markets we could reach with them, evaluate different qualities, and create blends that should have a broad sweet spot.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
On Wednesday, we address founding - how a roastery can be built, what marketing strategies we can recommend, how sourcing and purchasing green coffee can be designed to be profitable for all parties in the long term, and how a target audience can be defined through pricing and positioning.
Thursday, July 18, 2024
On Thursday, we'll dive fully into sensory skills. We'll learn how to conduct a professional cupping and a quality control cupping, we'll evaluate coffees using the SCA scoring sheet, taste and discuss various post-harvest processes and their influence on flavor, before moving into an open session with Ingo and Philipp.
Barbecue on Wednesday evening
On Wednesday evening, we invite all participants to a barbecue. Regardless of which days you sign up for, you're invited to eat, drink, and have relaxed conversation.
Who is the Roaster Summer School for?
- for everyone who wants to make great progress in roasting in a short time
- for everyone who enjoys exchanging knowledge
- for everyone who wants to further develop their roasting skills
- for everyone considering starting their own roastery
- for everyone already operating a roastery and wanting to sharpen their concept
- for everyone who roasts and wants to further develop their sensory skills
We focus on shorter sessions of 90 minutes, in which we share our experience, engage in exchange, and develop individual solutions for your topics.
Booking
Places are limited to 12 participants. One workshop day costs 350 CHF including lunch and beverages. The Wednesday evening event is open to all participants.
