(upbeat music) - The thing that's kept me intrigued by coffee and coffee roasting has been more the sensory experience.

(upbeat music continues) You can visibly see the coffee roasting change.

You can smell it change from the time it's a green unroasted coffee to the time it's ready for brewing.

(upbeat music continues) (coffee beans thudding) There's an audible sense experience too, because it'll crackle a little bit as it's roasting.

(upbeat music continues) There's a cadence to the roasting with the drum turning.

(machine rattling) My name is Greg Stumbo, and I'm a coffee roaster.

(machine whirring) Stumbeano's is a wholesale coffee roaster with online sales.

My wife Jenny and I started Stumbeano back in 2005 and have been doing this, the two-person operation, since 2008 probably.

Back in 2000, 2001, I saw a video documentary on PBS about a family that immigrated from Cuba that was a coffee roaster in Miami.

And early internet, I logged on and found out a little bit more about the family and their history, and by luck of the way of a popup ad came up and said, "Did you know you could roast coffee at home?"

My first coffee roasting purchase was a little home coffee roaster called the Cafe Roasto and maybe a cup of coffee at a time was what we could roast.

Took that and explored a little bit further, and the coffee hobby developed over time.

In August 2005 is when we officially got licensed and started roasting.

Coffee plays such an important role in people's lives because a lot of times it's the first thing they do when they get up in the morning.

The cup of Joe or the caffeine wake me up, but I think it's a rabbit hole when you get into different coffees and tastes and origins, and it's very much in the same line as like a micro brewery or a wine or any type of artisan product.

We're very much micro roasters so we can pivot easily and always try to select the coffees that are closest to harvest.

So we're always looking to select the freshest coffees from smaller growing farms and smaller plantations.

And a lot of times that leads us to discovering, exploring more unique coffee profiles and tastes.

We select our coffees from an importer in Minneapolis, and so we're able to learn right where the coffees are growing, who's growing them, from what plantation, and as far as how the importer/exporter handles the coffees.

It'll taste different depending on where it's grown.

You have coffees from Brazil that will taste different than coffees from Columbia, and the whole coffee belt that goes roughly around the equator is gonna have different sensory experiences for everybody that enjoys the coffee too.

There's a very strong artisan component to roasting coffee, especially when a simple of an operation as ours is, you know, we don't rely on any computerization or AI-driven model to kind of determine when the coffee's done.

Ultimately, I'm gonna look at it and decide, "Yep, that coffee's done," or, "Nope, that coffee needs a little bit more."

And then once the coffee's done, I'm just looking at those flavors that are inherent in the coffee, I'm just roasting to bring those flavors and aromas out.

That's a lot of times what I'll do with the Ethiopians is I'll draw the roast out a little bit to ensure that each bean is kind of roasted evenly, because if you roast it too fast at too high of a temperature, some of these beans end up getting scorched or burnt.

(coffee beans churning) The process of roasting coffee goes from us selecting coffees.

And once we get the coffees in, they come in burlap sacks, and the green unroasted coffee is actually the two seeds of a coffee cherry.

And the green part of the coffee bean is actually like a kind of a layer, basically.

The bean starts out very dense, you apply heat to it through the roaster, you turn it in the drum and over the course of 13-15 minutes that moisture evaporates.

And what you see is the bean will expand as it roasts, as it heats, and then as it expands you'll hear a crack.

That's when the flavors are developed, and the chemical reactions within the bean are happening.

The beans expanding and you're continuing to apply that heat.

As I'm roasting, what I'm looking for is changing color, change in smell, and then change of any sound as it happens.

(coffee beans thudding) (coffee beans crackling) So you hear that crackling.

(coffee beans crackling) That crackling is some of those beans have started what's called the second crack, and that's where the sugars really caramelize and develop their sweetness in that second crack.

(coffee beans crackling) Our coffee distribution scope is very regional, focused on the Fargo-Moorhead area and the Fergus Falls in Western Minnesota region as far as for our wholesale customers.

The online world is I think we've shipped to 47 states now, so it's basically nationwide.

Still kinda surprising me to see an order come from the middle of Oregon or the middle of West Virginia or somewhere.

We used to kind of know everybody who drank our coffee when we first started out, our customer log was like, oh, 10 to 15 to 20 people.

We're just grateful for the people that have so many options to choose coffee from and then they select our coffee.

20 years in a hobby that I really enjoy and still want to do every morning.

(upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.