The Pacific Northwest is known for its coffee.

One company is doing things a little bit differently.

Let's go learn about Trücup Low-Acid Coffee.

Meet RJ, the managing partner of Trücup Coffee.

RJ, what makes Trücup different?

Hi, Angela.

Well, the big difference officially, is that Tru.. mitigates the secretion of digested bile.

And what does that mean?

Well, the bottom line is that, we have 60% less acid than other leading brands making a friendlier cup of coffee.

So is it kind of like decaf?

So Angela that's a great question.

We use, the process is very much like, decaffeination.

We use specific settings of, temperature, water and steam to remove the harmful acids.

But this process also leaves all of the body, flavor, aroma, and caffeine.

So same premium taste, but low acid.

That's exactly right.

Let's go talk to Matt and see how we do it.

Okay Matt.

What's the secret to a great cup of coffee?

Yeah, the secret to a great cup of coffee is working with premium beans.

That's why all the farms we source with are known for producing high end specialty.

I assume it also has to do with the roasting process.

Yeah, absolutely.

You want to check it out?

Let's do it.

So the first thing you'll notice is our green beans tumbling in our drum in here.

And a lot of people think that it's a lot like a washing machine, that the coffee would just tumble and, and roll around in the drum itself, but that's, that's not the case.

This drum itself is baffled and then also segmented.

And so the journey of the coffee takes in the drum, it needs to be very specific.

And so this machine is set up is that we can see we have the drum spinning clockwise.

Down here in the lower left segment of the drum.

The beans pile together in and what we call the Bean Pile.

And that's where we take our information reading, our temperature readings from the Pile itself.

When the beans travel around up here and hit their apex and come around, they actually split in free fall.

We want that separation to occur because then we can hit each individual bean with really even convection or convection energy.

And that whole process will take about 12 to 14 minutes.

Okay.

So it's very, very quick.

Yeah.

It's very aggressive and rapid change that we're going to be applying to this coffee.

Yeah wow!

Our computer software will tell us chemically when the dehydration process is happened, but we can also take some visual indicators from it.

And we'll start to see color change in the coffee when, when the, moisture has been fully evaporated out.

We often call it - Gets darker?

Yeah!

And we also call it the Yellowing Stage.

Aw yeah.

Now you can start seeing something.

They smell good now.

And so this would be a really good visual indicator that our coffee's been properly dehydrated.

Wow.

A slightly flatter trajectory is what we're going to be shooting for.

That trajectory of that line is really the first point where we start developing what we think the coffee is going to taste like.

Like 385 degrees, we enter a part of, a point in the roast which we call First Crack.

And what that is, is coffee begins its life in the roaster as a endothermic reaction, meaning its absorbing energy.

And then it quickly turns into exothermic reaction, where it releases energy.

A great example of a, example of an endothermic/exothermic reaction in food is popcorn.

Popcorn will absorb energy, absorb energy until it can't hold it anymore.

And then popcorn pops.

Coffee cracks.

So at about 385 degrees, we’ll be able to hear it.

The coffee will begin to start cracking, snapping, and popping.

And what that allows us during the roasting process to do is, have the energy or the heat of the roast penetrate inside the bean and come in contact with the oils that are locked inside.

Those oils will begin to go through their own chemical reaction.

And then that's where we begin to develop flavor further.

Does the light roast take the least amount of time?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

Actually, the answer is no.

So when we develop a coffee, and develop the development phase of coffee, we want all roasts to be somewhat equal and so while there might be 20, 30 seconds difference between a dark roast and a light roast, we want the overall process to be the same.

So with a light roast, it will still take the same amount of time.

We'll just get there slightly slower.

As a d.. will want that whole first stage that roast to happen faster, because we are taking it longer into the roasting process.

But we want those times to be relatively the same.

So we're entering the stage right now which is called the Development Phase.

And so visually, if you were to look at this coffee, you would say, yeah, that absolutely looks like roasted coffee, it should be done.

And we use a lot of baking and cooking analogies here.

And so what we would do an analogy for this is say you were cooking blueberry.. You turn your oven light on, you look inside.

The nice golden brown top, the muffins look done.

You pull them out and you stick your toothpick in and pull it out and it's still wet in the middle.

Coffee, fairly similar.

The interior of the coffee is not developed.

And so we want to make sure that we hit proper development.

So the inside of that coffee bean or the oils really have been fully developed and go through the reaction, and build the flavors that we desire.

Can see it's getting into our dark phase here.

And Mikey's getting ready to drop the coffee out.

And you can hear that snapping and cracking.

I can hear it, yeah.

That's actually, a second exothermic reaction, which we call Second Crack, where the beans end up splitting a second time.

This is Trücup’s bold roast.

And so another good indicator for us is that we want the bold roast coming out right at the start of Second Crack.

So you can see when it exit out of the roaster.

We just got a little bit of snapping and cracking.

And then through the cooling process we stopped it pretty rapidly.

So how long is this process?

This cooling.

Yeah, so this is actually, the last stage of the roasting process is the cooling period and the coffee resting.

And so a lot like cooking a steak.

When you're done with your steak, you put it on the countertop, you have to let it rest to finish.

Coffee's very similar.

And that process will happen here in the cooling system.

This will be cool to the touch within about three minutes and then run through our system, to allow the coffee to de-gas.

Coffee needs to sit after it's been roasted for about 24 hours.

It'll off-gas twice its weight in CO2 in the first 24 hours.

So this right here is probably about a 35 pound batch.

So about 70 pounds of, CO2 will well release off the coffee over the next 24 hours.

So we let all the coffee rest before it goes into the bag.

So this will be bagged up and produced tomorrow.

So what's the secret?

So the secret to premium coffee is developing a roast to really accentuate what these beans are trying to offer.

So we've gone from green coffee to roasted coffee.

And now it's time for my favorite, drinking coffee.

Time to taste test.

Exactly.

Angela, we've got Trücup French roast and Trücup medium roast here.

Let's try it.

Sure.

Delicious.

And that's the beauty of Trücup, that b.. than your regular cup of coffee, you can have two cups.

Perfect.

Where can people try it?

They can go to our website www.trücupcoffee.com And we offer samples of every format.

Great.

Delicious.

Well, thank you for showing us the process of how it's made.

I'm Angela, thank you for exploring.

I'll see ya!