Rosso uses a Sōvda to colour sort through beans. Can you tell our subscribers more about the process of colour sorting and why it’s important at Rosso? How does it impact the final cup?

Paul. We have two Sōvda Pearls—one for the green coffee, and one for the roasted coffee. We have a different profile for every coffee, so we have to dial in the coffee depending on what colour the coffee is and how much we want to take out of it. If the coffee is washed, they're all very different. So, we have to create the profile through trial and error to make sure we're picking out the ones that we want to pick out. So, what the Sōvda colour sorter does is pretty cool—it uses cameras to identify any beans that don’t meet the visual standard. If it spots a defective bean or anything foreign, like a stick, it uses compressed air to reject it. Even with high-quality green coffee, you can still get the occasional defect slipping through. The sorter helps catch those, making sure we remove anything we don’t want before roasting. Another bonus is that the coffee passes through multiple vacuums during this process, so it removes a lot of dust. By the time it reaches the roaster, it’s really clean. On the roasted side, it helps pull out any quakers—those underdeveloped, pale beans—which are especially common in naturally processed coffees. It also catches any beans that might’ve gotten stuck in the roaster and ended up roasting twice, which makes them come out overdeveloped or burnt. Taking those out really improves the consistency and overall quality of the final coffee.

Dan. Quality control is the next step. If you can eliminate any defects or imperfect beans, as we call them, then you're going to get an even better cup of coffee. So, when you think about how many beans go into a shot of espresso, we're talking about 35-40 beans for instance, maybe even 45 on the high end. If 10 or 15 of those beans are bad, how do you think that's going to create inconsistencies at the cafe level? Every shot is going to be a little bit different. So, how do we achieve consistency from shot to shot, or brew to brew? This is where colour sorting comes into play. The clarity that you get from colour sorting is pretty wild when we do cuppings side by side with other roasters on the table—even if it is a very similar profile, you can always pinpoint what's the most consistent on the table in terms of profile. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to bring the Sōvda in: to provide a more consistent product for our customer base, while also ensuring that any of our wholesale clients have the most consistent product to work with. There are more variables down at the cafe level than just at home, and you need to be quick, so if you can eliminate any inconsistencies, then your offering is going to be much better.