Mill City Roasters Takes ‘Profiling For Purpose’ On the Road

A Mill City Roasters machine at the company’s showroom in Minnneapolis. Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown.

As we head into daylight savings time, the sun setting ever earlier on autumn with cold winter closing in, many of us might find ourselves in greater need of purpose.

Nowhere in the lower 48 is this more apparent than in Minnesota, where a new roasting workshop based on the concept has been born. Minneapolis-based Mill City Roasters is leading the workshop called “Flavor Profiling for Purpose,” coming this November to Minneapolis, Boulder (Colorado) and Portland (Oregon).

The event will involve tastings and discussions focused on strategic roast profiling and developing cupping skills to take advantage of current and emerging market trends in retail coffee.

At each tour stop, that discussion will be followed by a two-hour workshop designed to prepare roasters for the spike in plant-based beverage demand. Using the Barista Series Oat Milk from Oregon-based Pacific Foods, the workshop will involve a “sip-by-sip, interactive, multimedia discussion of practical sensory analysis and roast coffee flavor profiling,” according to Mill City.

Coffees provided by Minneapolis-based green coffee importer Cafe Imports will be used for tastings and to craft seasonal beverages with alternatives to dairy. “Throughout this exercise, we’ll touch on larger topics of roast profiling strategy and how your skills can be used more effectively to increase your bottom line,” Mill City says in an event announcement.

The Mill City Roasters Big Red Roast Rig, a bedecked 40-foot Peterbilt truck. Mill City Roasters photo.

The workshop will be followed by a voluntary opportunity to do a little good for the community at large by filling boxes of food purchased by Pacific Foods that will be donated to children facing food insecurity. Participants will also have the rare opportunity to experience the Big Red Roast Rig, Mill City’s 40-foot Peterbilt truck that has been miraculously transformed into a mobile roastery, brewing and education lab.

Roasters will have access to the 3-kilo and 500-gram Mill City roasters aboard the truck — the same models to be used at the US Roaster Championship — as well as brewing equipment supplied by La Marzocco and Wilbur Curtis.

Inside the Big Red Roast Rig. Mill City Roasters photo.

The cost to attend is $50 in person, while live-streaming passes are available for $25. Click here for more on the “Flavor Profiling for Purpose” tour, which is coming to the following locations:

• Saturday, Nov. 2: Mill City Roasters in Minneapolis. (map link)
• Friday, Nov. 8: OZO Coffee Roasters in Boulder, Colorado. (map link)
• Wednesday, Nov. 13 (the eve of Coffee Fest PNW): Buckman Coffee Factory in Portland, Oregon. (map link)