Curve Coffee Roasters is a small batch roastery based in beautiful Moab, Utah. We are passionate about finding the best coffees in the world, discovering the ideal roast to bring out the unique flavors and aromas in each, and making sure all that goodness makes its way to your morning cup.
We’re proud of the work we do as roasters, but it all starts on the farm. And amazing things are happening on coffee farms around the world these days. Coffee used to just be a commodity, with prices set by the global market with very little regard for the quality of the fruit and seeds (beans) produced by a farmer. The rise of the specialty coffee industry over the past few decades started changing that, creating a market for higher quality coffee than the big tin of bitter sludge sold at the grocery store. But growing and processing high quality coffee is both skill and labor intensive. Clusters of coffee cherries don’t all ripen at the same time, so farm workers need to hand select the ripe fruit and return to the same trees to harvest multiple times throughout a season.
The creation of the “Q,” or quality, grading system in 2003 set what has become a global standard to judge the quality of green coffee coming from farms around the world. Coffees scoring less than 80 points are considered commodity rather than specialty coffees. Curve only buys sources coffees scoring at least 85 points, because we find that’s where the fun really starts. With this system in place, farmers producing the best coffee are now able to charge get the highest prices, giving them an incentive to keep upping their game. And they have. We now routinely see farmers using cutting edge fermentation techniques, reviving traditional dry processing methods that require extremely high -quality control, and partitioning their land into micro-lots to experiment with various growing techniques and identify new ways to improve the quality of their coffee.
As a roaster, our job is to explore a coffee, identify the characteristics that make it special, and design a roast that will highlight all the hard work that was put into growing the coffee. As a roaster, more than anything our job is to not mess it up. The flavors you get in your cup are locked into the green beans we buy from the farmers. We work hard to find the right roast profile to bring out the sometimes-subtle notes of fruits and florals, to balance the brights and bitters, to unlock the goodness created by the growers and mother nature. See the section below on the Coffee Curve —the origin of our name—to learn more about how we use roasting technology and lots of experimentation to get the roast just right.
You’ll notice that our stock of single origin coffees is always evolving. That’s because we want to bring you the freshest and best coffees we can find, and that means having our offerings change with the seasons. For our blends, we try to maintain a consistent flavor profile, but even those will change a bit over time since we’re just not willing to keep using coffee from previous harvests.
It's an exciting time to be drinking coffee. At Curve, we'll keep searching for the best coffees and the perfect roast for each - we hope you'll join us for the journey!
Chris and David grew up in St. Louis, Missouri in a family
passionate about food and drink. Dinner was often a special event, the
culmination of trips to the farmers market, fishmonger, and, always, our dad’s
wine cellar. Over time, coffee became an important piece of the family’s
culinary culture, and a Christmas morning tasting of various coffees found by
members of the family has become a tradition. We learned early on that the
difference between ordinary and extraordinary in food and drink is enormous,
but we also learned that enjoyment and community—not ego and attitude—are what
matters most.
After growing up together, Chris and David went their
separate ways. Chris went to Colorado, Mexico, then Washington, DC. He worked
along the way as a barista, an educator, and travel guide before ending up at a
think tank working on public policy and U.S.-Mexico relations. David went to
Southern California, Houston, San Francisco, and finally Los Angeles, working as
an engineer and in sales. When the pandemic hit they were ready to leave their
respective cities and start new chapters. When Chris told David he was moving
to Moab and wanted him to join to start a coffee company, David was all-in. The
endless outdoors of Utah drew them in; their love of coffee, cooking, and
experimenting brought them back together after 20+ years.
The Roast Master:
The Master Roaster:
The Coffee Curve
aKA How we got our name
When it comes to coffee, there are tons of types out there: different varietals, grown in different climates, at different elevations, all of which change the properties of the beans themselves. Our goal is to determine how each coffee bean needs to be roasted to bring out the best flavor profile.
We do this through a process of systematic experimentation, changing the levels of heat and airflow applied during each stage of the roast. By mapping out the way that the beans' temperature rises through the time of the roast and plotting that as a curve, we can go back and replicate it or tweak it to be able to consistently produce the ideal flavor profile for each specific coffee.
So the name Curve is used to symbolize our drive to roast each coffee in a way that brings out the best characteristics of the bean.