Every Roast Feels Like a Parachute Jump: Jasmina Yankova of Jasmin Specialty Coffee Roastery

There is a point in a roast where the bean is no longer green and not yet brown. The sugars and amino acids inside it have just started to react, and for a few seconds the drum gives off a smell that has nothing to do with coffee.

Jasmina Yankova waits for that exact point every time she roasts. Jasmin Specialty Coffee Roastery, based in Varna, is among the participants at Good Coffee Festival in Sofia. What follows comes from a Slow Made City conversation ahead of the festival - ten short questions, none of them about turnover or locations.

The smell at 160 degrees

The question of which aroma from the job she would keep forever is usually taken as an invitation to be nostalgic. This answer came back with a phase and a temperature.

"There is one stage in roasting that is magical for me. Every time I roast, I feel like I am about to jump with a parachute. I have that sense of an adventure coming, and it is intriguing, and magical."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

The comparison is to the waiting, not to the jump. Between loading the beans and the moment they begin to change, a roaster has very little to do except watch the temperature.

"Around 160 degrees, when the yellowing phase ends and the Maillard reaction starts, there is a very floral, milky smell that is magical to me. For me it is the beginning of something good."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

The two phases she names mark the border after which coffee starts to smell like coffee. Until then the bean is shedding moisture and turning yellow, and the smell is grassy, close to hay. The Maillard reaction rearranges sugars and amino acids into aromatic compounds, and from that point on every second in the drum moves the taste in the cup. Later, a little under 200 degrees, first crack arrives, and the roaster's decisions all sit between those two markers.

The number is not a setting, and she hedges it herself: it depends on the coffee, on the altitude the roastery sits at, on a great many things. The same thermometer reads differently with a denser bean, a wetter bean or a bigger batch, which makes 160 degrees a landmark rather than a recipe.

Every bean passes through their hands several times

Asked whether coffee is an art, a craft or a habit, she separated all three and left the habit in the past.

"The craft I associate with roasting. The craft is repetition, built on knowledge that is both theoretical and practical. Craft, for me, is feeling the raw material and how it changes."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

The split is more precise than it sounds. Roasting theory can be read - curves, temperatures, phases. Knowing when to drop this particular batch is not written anywhere, because it depends on the harvest, on how much moisture the bean is carrying and on the machine in front of you.

"Coffee is a real art for me, and it keeps developing. The craft is accumulated experience, and doing it with your own hands, because here every single bean passes through our hands several times."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

That last part is literal rather than figurative. In a small roastery the green coffee is inspected before it is roasted, the batch is checked once it has cooled, defective beans are picked out by hand, and the same hands do the packing. Large industry puts optical sorters where a small operation puts people.

The recipe is not 27 seconds

The first question in the series asks what you forgive coffee but not people. The answer started at the farm.

"I have enormous respect for coffee and for everyone in the industry. Starting with the people who grow it and pick it - I have been to a farm like that and I know what it takes."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

From there it turned specific. What she does not forgive is technical, and it happens in the last thirty seconds of that entire journey.

"The grind, keeping to the recipe - and in the recipe we have a window, it is not exactly 27 seconds, every coffee demands its own recipe."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

27 seconds is the number every barista has heard. It is a leftover from the years when espresso was made to one rule for every coffee. Today the dose is weighed, the time is logged for each lot separately, and the grinder gets reset within a single day, because humidity in the room moves the extraction.

"What I cannot forgive a barista is serving a cup that is not good enough, because to me that is a kind of crime against everyone in the chain. Crime is putting it too strongly - disrespect, rather."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

The correction mid-sentence is the important part. The chain she means is long - picker, processing, exporter, roaster - and every step in it can be done well and still be lost to one badly ground coffee. There is one thing she does not forgive the guest, either: "I cannot forgive someone putting sugar and cinnamon in their coffee," she says, and laughs.

What it costs the farmer

Asked what they would put to the farmer who grew their beans, most people in the trade come back with variety or processing. This answer was about his day.

"I would ask him what it costs him. How does his day go?"

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

She has something to compare it with, having visited a coffee farm. Cherries on the same branch do not ripen at the same time, so they are picked by hand over several passes; then come pulping, fermentation, drying and sorting, and the bean still has not travelled anywhere.

"Most people think it is easily available and ought to be a cheap drink, but that is very far from the truth."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

This is someone who buys green coffee talking. The price moves with the exchange and with weather reports out of Brazil, and between the farm and the shelf sit freight, duty, roasting and packaging. On top of that comes the loss in the drum: the beans dry out as they roast and a batch comes out noticeably lighter than it went in.

Explaining the cup is part of the job

Which is harder, making good coffee or explaining it? The answer divided her own team.

"Some of my staff find explaining harder, but they make superb coffee. You have to be able to explain, so that you can inform the customer, because I think we have a duty to raise coffee culture."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

The duty is not rhetorical. If the person at the counter never learns why one coffee smells of citrus and another of chocolate, they will order what they ordered last time, and all the work behind the sourcing and the roast stays invisible to them.

"There are so many variations, so many different notes to enjoy, it is like drinking a completely different beverage."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

Eight years behind that counter also give her a comparison over time.

"As someone who has been doing this for eight years now, I can say with confidence that things are moving. There are specialty coffees that people buy more and more."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

Asked who taught her the most important thing about coffee, she said nobody was the only one. She is 47, counts the lessons as a single accumulation and puts her earlier work in management and marketing among them. For coffee itself she lists people in the trade, and adds that she tells them so constantly.

"You have to keep building on yourself and keep learning. And try new things, and have the strength for it."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

The blend stays in the house

The only question she answered with a refusal was the one about a recipe kept as a family secret.

"I do have one, yes. The roastery blend. But I am not going to tell you."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

What she chose to keep is telling. The origins of a specialty coffee are printed on the bag itself - farm, region, altitude, processing. A blend is the other thing: a combination that has to taste the same after one of its components runs out with the harvest. The secret in it is not a list of countries but what gets swapped so the taste stays put.

A bad person does not make good coffee

The last question was whether a bad person can make good coffee. The answer came immediately and went well beyond coffee.

"No, they cannot. Not coffee, not even bread. Any food, any service at all. You need good energy. You walk into a place and somebody on the staff is upset, and you feel it straight away."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

Then she softened the premise instead of defending it.

"I believe all people are good, they just have their moments. There are good people; there are no bad people. But someone in a bad mood, someone sad or angry, can make a bad drink."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

"As the old grandmothers used to say when they kneaded bread: say nice things to the bread so it turns out tasty and well risen."

JASMINA YANKOVA, JASMIN SPECIALTY COFFEE ROASTERY

The comparison with bread is not incidental and not only folklore. Both are living materials that respond to the weather, to temperature and to the hands working them, and in both the mistake stays invisible until somebody tastes it. The roastery will be among the participants in front of NDK from 11 to 13 September.

Of everything she would ask the farmer, the last one has nothing to do with trade. Not price, not yield, not certification - how does he drink his coffee.