Realizing the Potential Inside Every Bean
The arts of roasting and blending are about perfecting nature
When a coffea arabica plant grows to maturity under the right conditions — in fertile soil at high elevations, with ideal temperatures and microclimates, after years of careful farming — it produces cherries that contain extraordinary promise. The cherries are harvested at peak ripeness and processed to render the green coffee beans. Inside those beans, worlds of flavor wait to be unlocked.
That unlocking happens when green beans are expertly roasted. Through heat and time, a seed that was previously stubbornly inedible becomes ready to yield its flavor when ground and brewed. Then blenders, like master chefs, complement the flavor of one coffee with another — creating harmony and counterpoint that sings in the cup in new and surprising ways.
The trick is not adding flavor to a bean — the flavors must already be there in some form, hiding. The trick is in how you coax them out.
This module explores how master roasters and blenders use different techniques to unearth the flavors naturally embedded in beans: enhancing them, concentrating them, playing them off each other, or even changing them through deliberate processes like aging.
Three Key Actors
- The Farmer — grows and harvests coffee cherries at peak ripeness
- The Master Roaster — uses heat to unlock flavor potential in green beans
- The Blender — combines coffees to create profiles no single origin can achieve
A History of Roasting at Starbucks
From a single store in Pike Place Market to a global roasting operation
The art of roasting is what first drew Starbucks to coffee in 1971. Our master roasters have been practicing it ever since — learning to recognize the potential inside each batch of beans and fine-tuning time and temperature to bring out the best.
Alfred Peet — The Godfather
Alfred Peet opened Peet's Coffee & Tea in Berkeley, California, roasting beans the way his Dutch father taught him — dark, in the European style. He believed Americans deserved better than stale canned coffee made from inferior robusta beans, and championed all-arabica, custom-roasted coffee.
Starbucks Opens in Pike Place Market
Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker — three college friends inspired by Peet — opened one retail store selling only roasted whole bean coffee (no lattes!). Their coffee was roasted in Berkeley by Alfred Peet himself. Within a year, they bought a used Dutch roaster and installed it near Seattle's Fisherman's Terminal, assembling it by hand with only a German-language manual.
Dave Olsen & Espresso Roast
Dave Olsen opened Seattle's "original espresso bar," Cafe Allegro, and sought a perfect espresso blend. Collaborating with the Starbucks founders, they developed the signature Espresso Roast — a pre-roast blend of Latin American and Indonesian beans, richly intense and caramelly sweet. Countless trials went into getting it just right. This blend remains unchanged to this day.
Howard Schultz's Italian Vision
Howard Schultz joined as marketing manager. After a trip to Italy, he envisioned the Italian coffeehouse tradition — a "third place" between work and home — for America. He convinced the founders to pilot a full espresso bar, and in April 1984, the first Starbucks Caffè Latte was served.
FlavorLock™ Technology
A revolutionary packaging innovation: a small one-way valve inserted into the coffee bag. It allows carbon dioxide from freshly roasted beans to escape without letting flavor-robbing oxygen in — keeping coffee fresh for weeks rather than just seven days. Introduced widely in 1989, this allowed Starbucks to ship coffee anywhere and expand nationally without building a roasting plant in every city.
Kent Roasting Plant & Computer-Aided Roasting
With stores doubling year-over-year to 165, a state-of-the-art plant opened near Seattle in Kent, Washington. It was the first to use computers to achieve roasting consistency with every roast profile — a breakthrough for quality at scale. Master roasters still oversaw everything, but technology gave them tools to perform at new levels.
East Coast Expansion & Lighter Roasts
Starbucks acquired the Coffee Connection in Boston — a roaster beloved for lighter-roasted coffees. This prompted exploration of the lighter end of the roast spectrum. In 1998, the Milder Dimensions line launched: Breakfast Blend, LightNote Blend, and others. These were Starbucks' first departures from its founding dark-roast identity.
First International Roasting Plant
A roasting plant opened in Amsterdam, The Netherlands — a strategic hub for distributing to Europe, Middle East, and Africa. The same year, the Carson Valley plant opened in Nevada. As stores tripled worldwide, more roasting and distribution facilities opened globally to keep pace.
Pike Place® Roast
After more than 30 recipe and roast-curve iterations, Pike Place Roast launched — a smooth, balanced medium-roast blend of Latin American coffees brewed every day, all day, in every store. It was developed specifically by brewing on a Bunn commercial batch-brewer, the exact machine used in stores, keeping the customer experience front of mind throughout.
Starbucks® Blonde Roast
After 80 iterations over 18 months, Willow Blend and Veranda Blend launched as Starbucks' first true light roast coffees. The goal: richly flavored coffees with less prominent roast flavor, avoiding the sharp acidity that often characterizes lighter roasts from other companies.
The Art & Science of Roasting
Transforming green coffee into glistening gems of flavor
In each roasting plant, a master roaster and a small team ensure the equipment runs at optimum efficiency, the green coffee quality is fully highlighted, and taste is consistent worldwide. Roasting at Starbucks leverages technology for consistency — but the human element is an absolute requirement. A master roaster's craft is both highly specialized and unique; those who've earned the title have learned by doing.
The tensions around roasting are between what we've always done and what we're learning. All of these things are moving parts in the multidimensional game that we're playing.
— Andrew Linnemann, VP Global Coffee & TeaBefore beans reach the roaster, the Starbucks Coffee Trading Company (SCTC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, tastes a preshipment sample for every lot. A defect in even one cup results in rejection. Approximately 90% of preshipment samples are accepted. After shipping, arrival samples are cupped by the Global Coffee Quality (GCQ) team in Seattle to confirm nothing went wrong during transit.
At the roasting plant, green beans are cleaned through a machine using screens, vacuums, and magnets to remove sticks, rocks, and debris — then weighed and moved to green coffee silos until scheduled for roasting.
The Roasting Stages — Click each to learn more
Blonde Roast
Soft cocoa · Lightly roasted nuts · Crisp
Medium Roast
Cocoa · Toasted nuts · Balanced
Dark Roast
Bold · Rich · Full-bodied · Roasty
Starbucks organizes all coffees into these three roast profiles because customers use roast as a primary indicator of flavor. The difference between lightest and darkest is dramatic — and historically Starbucks was known as a "dark roast company," but that has changed significantly since 2011.
Flavor Variety in the World of Blends
The spice of life — how blending creates what no single origin can
Blending is an art with a history almost as old as the coffee trade itself. In the 1700s, seafaring traders created what is believed to be the world's oldest coffee blend: Mocha Java — combining bright coffee from Yemen and rich, herbal beans from the Indonesian island of Java.
The art of blending is not simply mixing coffees together. At Starbucks, blends are created through a deep understanding of terroir, processing methods, and roast. Simply combining coffees arbitrarily creates muddled, unfocused taste experiences. A mastery of the interplay of flavors is required.
How Blending Works — The Wet Blending Process
- The Coffee Development team begins by mixing different percentages of brewed coffee from various origins — this is "wet blending"
- They explore ratios until the desired flavor profile is achieved
- Once the recipe is confirmed in liquid form, they blend the actual green beans and explore roast curves
- The final blend is tasted again to verify the profile is achieved
Two Approaches: When to Blend
Pre-Roast Blend
Different green beans are combined before roasting and go through the drum together. The goal is one unified roast expression — smooth, balanced, more uniform flavor profile. Beans are chosen because they reach their best flavors at the same roast curve. Washed (wet-processed) coffees do especially well together.
Examples: House Blend, Espresso Roast, Breakfast Blend, Komodo Dragon Blend®
Post-Roast Blend
Different coffees are roasted separately using different roast curves, then blended after cooling. Used when a single roast curve would sacrifice one component's best qualities to achieve another's. Results in multiple roast expressions, creating greater complexity in the cup. More labor-intensive but worth it for certain profiles.
Examples: Christmas Blend, Caffè Verona®, Gold Coast Blend®
A key insight from master blenders: having a coffee with a lot of flavor complexity doesn't mean the blend will be complex. And the most flavorful component doesn't necessarily need to be the highest percentage. If its percentage is too high, the other coffees won't contribute enough to the blend. Balance is everything.
The Evolution of Starbucks® Blends — Tap any card to learn the story
House Blend
Organic Yukon Blend®
Caffè Verona®
Espresso Roast
Christmas Blend
Gold Coast Blend®
Anniversary Blend
Pike Place® Roast
Blonde Espresso Roast
Maintaining Consistency Year to Year
Because coffee is an agricultural product, even a single-origin coffee's flavor can shift slightly season to season. The Coffee Development team adjusts blend recipes seasonally. For example, if the Costa Rican coffee providing acidity in Pike Place Roast is unavailable one year, they identify another Latin American coffee with similar acidity characteristics — keeping the overall flavor profile consistent even as the specific beans change.
Green Coffee's Other Destinations
Aged coffee, decaffeination, soluble coffee, and green coffee extract
Most green coffee is shipped to roasting plants for blending, roasting, and packaging. But some beans take different journeys — to be aged, decaffeinated, made into soluble instant coffee, or extracted for Refreshers® beverages. Each path unlocks a different expression of coffee's potential.
Aged Coffee
The discovery of aged coffee was serendipitous. In the late 1600s, the Dutch introduced large-scale coffee cultivation on Java in Indonesia, but demand was hard to predict. Surplus beans waited on plantations in heat and humidity for up to several years — and then spent additional time in ships crossing to the Americas. What emerged was mellow, complex, and cedary — much better than expected.
Today, Starbucks ages select Indonesian coffee in a warehouse in Singapore for 3–5 years. The tropical humidity mirrors growing conditions and provides a stable aging environment. The bags are rotated, flipped, brushed, and vacuumed by hand throughout the year — it's anything but passive. The Global Coffee Quality team in Seattle conducts annual tastings, looking for spice, peat moss, and toasted marshmallow notes that signal readiness.
Something special happens to Indonesian coffees when they age. Where aging lowers the quality of Latin American or African coffees, it glorifies Indonesian ones — deepening body, concentrating earthy flavors, and transforming herbal notes to spicy.
Why Only Indonesian Coffee?
Most coffees simply go "past-crop" when aged — their richness fades and they taste old. Indonesian coffees are unique: they naturally possess earthy, herbal flavor notes and muted acidity to begin with. Aging further reduces acidity, deepens body, concentrates the earthy notes, and transforms herbal into spicy complexity. Our Christmas Blend and Anniversary Blend would not be the same without aged Indonesian coffee.
Decaffeination — Three Methods
Starbucks views decaf drinkers as some of the most loyal and discerning customers — they drink coffee purely for the taste. Decaffeination happens before roasting: green beans are sent directly from origin to third-party decaffeinating facilities.
The challenge is removing caffeine (which is water-soluble) without removing the other flavor compounds. All methods use water, but they differ in how they select which compounds to remove. Decaffeination removes most caffeine — but not all.
Used for most Starbucks decaf coffees. Uses a chemical solvent — methylene chloride — that is highly selective in removing caffeine, so more of the original coffee flavor is preserved than with any other method.
Used for Starbucks® Decaf Komodo Dragon Blend®. No solvents are applied directly to the coffee bean.
Used for Starbucks® Decaf Sumatra. A solvent-free, chemical-free process using naturally pressurized CO₂.
Soluble Coffee & Green Extract
Starbucks VIA® Instant began as a solution for Frappuccino blended beverages — baristas originally had to brew gallons of double-strength Italian Roast and store it in refrigerators. Soluble coffee solved the efficiency problem. When the development team realized how good it tasted, they refined it further into VIA. The green beans are roasted to the appropriate profile, then brewed, concentrated, and dried. A proprietary "microground" coffee is added to lend body, aroma, and richness. It brews in both hot and cold liquids.
Green Coffee Extract is derived from 100% arabica beans through a unique process and used in Starbucks Refreshers® beverages. The caffeine comes naturally from green (unroasted) coffee — which is why Refreshers provide energy without traditional coffee flavor.
Key Terms Glossary
Test Your Knowledge
50 questions across all chapters — Introduction, History, Art & Science, Blends, and Decaf & More. Each answer reveals detailed feedback.