Hailing from a long line of coffee-loving Italians who migrated from Vasto, Abruzzo, BrewHub’s Coffee Culturalist Domenico Spadaccini has been a coffee-fiend from the get-go.
Dom started drinking coffee at five years of age and has been commercially roasting it since 1997. He’s owned a café, run his own roasting business and established a wildly successful coffee chain in Hong Kong.
When we brought Dom on board as a Coffee Culturalist here at BrewHub, we were pumped. We knew this meant great things for our clients. Dom is enthused, talented and mind-blowingly knowledgeable about single origin beans and specialty* coffee. He’s also deeply passionate about instilling dedication and pride in our entire team, and giving them a stellar coffee education so we can answer any question and enhance every coffee-drinking experience in all BrewHub workplaces.
We sat down with Dom and asked him to spill the secrets behind a great cup of coffee.
1. Drink it quick.
“The peak time to drink coffee is two to eight weeks after roasting. It needs a little rest after we roast it to settle the gas, but coffee is essentially dying from the minute it comes out the roaster. If you like it fresh, beware of long expiry dates.”
2. You can’t beat specialty beans.
“We only use specialty coffee here at BrewHub using single origin arabica and robusta beans from the best coffee growing regions around the world. All our beans are rated 80 plus points and tend to grow at higher altitudes, making them taste sweet, clean and flavourful. We’ve got plans to create more blends and offer single origin to our customers, which we’re really excited about.”
3. A great roaster needs four key attributes.
“Great roasters need a good technical understanding, a good palate and a passion for perfection – you’ve got to really love what you do. I’ve met baristas who don’t drink coffee and they can understand the technical side, but the passion and instinct just aren’t there. Patience is also important. To build a blend properly, a roaster really needs to examine single origin characteristics and develop in-depth roast profiles. Great blends aren’t thrown together willy-nilly.”
4. Impartiality is also key.
“Roasters represent a lot of palettes, not just our own. I’ve spent a great deal of time as an international barista judge and it’s tough to keep your own preferences out of it because the roasting process itself is quite personal. Roasters can get stuck in a method or style they prefer themselves personally, but I’ve always tried to excel at all styles so I can deliver to a wide range of palettes.”
5. Roasters make great coffee counsellors.
“At social occasions, I’m always bombarded with bad coffee stories. People are so passionate about their coffee and are devastated when it disappoints.”
It’s hard to believe this bland little green bean – actually, it’s not even a bean, it’s a seed – undergoes such an incredible metamorphosis and has a huge impact on our lives, in our cultures, in our world.
6. Don’t underestimate automated equipment.
“When I first used BrewHub’s workplace coffee machines I was blown away by the quality of the espresso. You’d need a barista at the top of their game to be able to replicate what they can do. These machines completely changed my opinion of automated equipment.”
7. BrewHub’s IMF roaster is a gamechanger.
“At BrewHub we use an IMF roaster, which is handmade in Italy and takes a year to build. It’s extremely compact and takes up a third of the size of most other machines in the same capacity. It uses less gas so has a lower carbon footprint and it’s a smokeless production, which is important for the environment too. I love that we can run it fully automated or manually.”
8. Great equipment needs passion behind it.
“There are certain phases that happen in the roasting process that need to be managed and monitored through the means of energy, and the end flavour or style is dictated by the roaster. I’ve always stayed across the latest equipment and happenings and hype, but nothing should replace the passion for manual aspects of roasting.”
9. The roasting journey is very sensory.
“The first phase of coffee roasting is the drying phase. The beans start swelling and eventually break down when they reach around 200 degrees, which sounds like popcorn cracking. The smell changes along the way: like straw at first, then a damp wool jumper, then an earthy smell, and finally, toasted coffee (some stages definitely smell better than others!).We develop a roast profile by introducing heat and air at certain stages. If you go gently, the coffee can take up to 20 minutes to roast. Our roasting process takes about 15 minutes but can vary substantially depending on depth of roast. If you go too slowly you can bake your beans rather than toast them, and you won’t be able to coax those flavours and aromas out of the coffee.”“You can easily ruin a roast by going too slow. But go too fast, and you’ll end up with a situation where your coffee looks done on the outside but is hard and raw on the inside.”
10. A great roaster is actually a great toaster.
Fun fact: although we talk about roasting coffee, in Italy the term is “tosto chichi caffe”, which translates to toasting coffee. Save that for your next quiz night!
*Specialty coffee is the highest form of coffee available and is judged by a 100-point scale. Find out more
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