At Good Life Coffee, quality is built through many small, carefully monitored steps. Each one affects the final result in the cup, and at every stage we aim to do things a little better than before.
One of our most important recent developments has been investing in a new Color Sorter machine, further strengthening our quality control. Before diving into that, it’s helpful to understand the bigger picture it is part of.
Quality begins with green coffee
The first and most crucial step is high-quality green coffee. We rely on over ten years of professional experience, source coffees from the freshest harvest seasons, and work closely with trusted, long-term partners.
Each year, hundreds of coffee samples arrive at our roastery. We test-roast coffees almost weekly to identify the most interesting and highest-quality lots for our selection. When the raw material is excellent, the roaster’s work becomes more precise and focused on what matters most: flavor.
Roasting – Respecting the raw material
The next step is roasting itself. Our roaster, Richard, approaches his craft with precision and dedication. Every coffee is unique: origin, variety, and processing method all influence the type of roast that best highlights its characteristics.
Our job is not to shape coffee into something of our own making, but to respect the raw material and bring out its natural, distinctive flavor profile.
Quality control and the new color sorter
The third step — and the focus of this article — is quality control. We have recently introduced a new Color Sorter machine, taking this stage to the next level.
A Color Sorter is an optical sorting device that detects color and surface deviations in individual coffee beans with exceptional accuracy. Simply put, it separates beans that are too light, too dark, or otherwise defective from the roast batch — leaving only those that meet our quality standards.
You probably remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Just like in the tale, we are looking for the ones that are “just right.”
Similar sorting has always been part of the process, carried out manually during roasting and throughout production. However, as you might guess, a machine outperforms the naked eye by far. Still, the Color Sorter does not replace professional skill — it supports it. It allows us to remove individual defective beans more efficiently, including those that may go unnoticed during visual inspection.
Why Does This Matter?
Even a small number of defective beans can affect the flavor of an entire batch. Even the highest-quality green coffee can contain quakers — underdeveloped or immature beans that cannot be “saved” through roasting.
Quakers contribute bitter, dry, and unpleasant flavors to the cup. They are often the result of poor plant health, insufficient nutrition, or the picking of unripe coffee cherries. Because they contain less sugar, protein, and starch than fully developed beans, they roast at a different rate. Quakers can be difficult to identify in green coffee but become more visible after roasting — and this is where the Color Sorter is especially effective.
In the image: defective beans on the left, properly developed beans on the right.
With color-sorted coffee, the result is a cleaner, more balanced, and more consistent cup — simply better coffee. The Color Sorter gives us a stronger foundation to do what we do best: roast coffee that expresses the finest characteristics of its origin without distractions.
Quality Control Is an Ongoing Process
Quality control does not end with roasting. Weekly cupping sessions are an essential part of our work: we regularly taste all our coffees and evaluate them over the weeks following roasting, as coffee continues to develop in flavor. We also test our coffees using different brewing methods whenever possible.
In the image: a cupping session in progress.
Investing in the Color Sorter and in quality control overall is a long-term commitment for us. We want to ensure that every bag leaving our roastery meets the standards we set for ourselves — and the expectations our customers have for us.
We hope this dedication to quality is something you can taste in your cup.
