Hi,
I'm also a newbie to this site.
But, I just wrote an article about Colombian coffee beans. So, your story brings up a lot of questions for me about your decision to move to Colombia. From my research you have chosen one of the top locations (if not the top) in the world to look for great coffee beans to export. So, congratulations on that.
I'm curious are you working with co-ops in one of the three top coffee bean growing departments in Colombia? From my understanding Caldas, Quindío, or Risaralda are the top places to be.
I'm also curious how you chose Colombia for the place to look for great coffee bean exports.
Having just spent several days researching this, I'm really curious if some of your choices along the way match what I found online while researching.
I probably shouldn't venture to give any advice since I'm definitely not an expert. But, where I would start, if I were in your shoes, would be to buy a small bag of unroasted Colombian beans from a company that already has a great following and great reviews. During my research of unroasted green coffee beans for an article on my web site, I found that Colombian Supremo Unroasted Green Coffee by Coffee Bean Direct on Amazon was one that had pretty good reviews. Another was also called Colombian Supremo by Fresh Roasted Coffee. They had even higher ratings.
If you don't like or trust Amazon rating, then maybe you have a source of your own.
You seem to have a good eye for roasted beans. So, maybe after viewing some beans that have good ratings, it might help to develop an eye for green beans.
As for roasting, I thought a very good resource was actually Wikipedia. They have a chart for temperatures to use for what type of roast you are going for.
I don't have enough posts to give you a link. But, if you use Google, and search for "coffee bean roasting", and look for the Wikipedia page, I think you should be able to find it.
[UPDATE] I now have enough posts to give you that URL. Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_roasting
Hope some of this helps. Either way, good luck on your new adventure!
Regards,
sjmyst
