about us

Hong and I started Barismo Coffee Roasters in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 2008. From the beginning, we've focused on finding good green coffee, preserving its quality, and roasting it without getting in the way of what makes it interesting.

We roast light to light-medium because we want coffee to taste like where it comes from, not just how it was roasted.

We lean heavily toward washed coffees because they tend to show off the work of the farm, the growing conditions, and the variety itself. Good coffee starts with good picking. That means more selective harvesting, more labor, and ideally better wages for the people actually picking the coffee. We look for low-defect coffees and take green-coffee storage seriously because there's no point in paying for quality only to lose it before roasting.

The roasting side is just as important. Roaster defects and errors are far more common than people realize. Astringency, unpleasant acidity, and harsh roast flavors often get passed off as a particular roasting style. I think a lot of roasters become accustomed to these flavors and eventually mistake them for something desirable. The same can happen with dark roasting, where the taste of the roast becomes more important than the coffee underneath it.

We're not trying to roast as lightly as possible. We're trying to develop sweetness, balance acidity, and avoid introducing flavors that weren't supposed to be there.

We select coffees because they're different and interesting, not because we want everything to taste the same.

Good coffee starts at the farm. Our job is to make sure you can taste it.

Cheers,

Jaime van Schyndel