When you sit down with a freshly brewed cup of Rocksteady Coffee, the aromas that meet you are chocolatey, smooth, and have just the right amount of depth. Blue Mountain Coffee is unlike any coffee you’ve had before or you’ll have elsewhere. If perfection were possible on earth, Blue Mountain Coffee would certainly be an unblemished example.
Reaching these highs isn’t one of nature’s minor miracles, even with the advantages of our microclimate and timeless volcanic soil. To make exceptional coffee, you need a commitment to the best and it needs to flow throughout the farm.
I want to share what our community of farmers commit to with you today, not to profess our method as being the only way to achieve sustainable agriculture and the perfect cup of coffee, but to bring your next cup of Rocksteady’s Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee to life for you.
Beneath the chocolatey notes and the smooth finish is something even more remarkable than other Blue Mountain coffees: a team working together to produce coffee the best way we know how.
It Starts with Slow Farming
Excellence in coffee begins with our love and care for the land and the coffee trees we plant -- every single day of the year.
On our farm, we select seedlings that will thrive in the conditions of our farm. We look for those that grow naturally underneath the larger heavy-bearing trees and plant them carefully in holes that we prepared to receive them. We can’t understate the importance of this step, and our friends and customers who enjoy gardening know exactly what we mean: planting errors will harm not only harvest but make any and all farming operations more difficult.
As always, the gift of love and time plays a role in our farming practice: we nurture every tree for three years before it is ready to provide its first fruit. Caring for the plant means pruning it regularly, carefully weeding using only organic methods, and inspecting the tree for pests and fungi.
It may sound simple, but our expert team is able to repeat this process for the 1,000 coffee trees sat on every acre.
If it sounds difficult, it is. Slow farming requires incredible knowledge, labor, and resources to complete, but the results are remarkable.
From our perspective, it’s also why Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee costs more per pound than almost any other coffee. When you brew a cup of Rocksteady Coffee, you’re enjoying the fruits of years’ of labor and decades of expertise in every cup. What’s more, you’re ensuring the farmers who so carefully completed all this work to perfection are more than adequately compensated.
Now imagine the same process for your average coffee at $8.99 per pound: what do you imagine the farmers are receiving for all their efforts? While some regions are able to cope with the help of pesticides and mechanization, this initial farming process is still largely completed with the same traditional methods.
We Choose Hand-Reaping Every Harvest
The next stage of our production process is our nine-month long harvest season.
Each of Rocksteady Coffee’s farmers bring decades of experience and a keen eye for spotting the most perfectly ripe coffee cherries, leaving those that need a little more of nature’s nurturing hand for another day.
While coffee farms in regions like Brazil and Ethiopia are now increasingly turning towards mechanization, there’s no option to do this in the Blue Mountains. Mechanized harvesters can only cope with a maximum slope of 20%, so here, hand-reaping will always be the way we harvest. For our team, we wouldn’t have it any other way because hand-reaping is the only way to ensure we select ripe cherries.
Hand-reaping only the perfect beans is how we guarantee that every cup of coffee has only the chocolatey notes that serve as an anthem for the Blue Mountains, our farmers, our commitment and our process.
We Complete Pulping and Washing on the Farm
Once we pick our berries, we begin the process of preparing them for our customers. THose berries are first measured in a coffee box then pulped to remove the outer layer of the berries. We do all this on the farm to keep a close eye on those beans but also so we can use the spring water from the farm to rinse off, by hand, the sweet inner layer of the berries.
Our process is a semi-wash, and we can only achieve it by rinsing our beans by hand. Another coffee producer will use a pulping machine for a full wash. Our way isn’t just more careful, but we use significantly less water in our production.
We Finish Drying & Resting in Kingston
There’s a saying about our Blue Mountains: the longer you leave something to dry here, the more saturated it becomes.
Our rainy mountain home is a respite from the famous Caribbean heat of the lowlands, but all coffee beans need to be dried before they venture onwards to the roasting process.
The drying phase is the first time our beans leave the only home they’ve known, and they make their way to the capital city of Kingston. Down in Kingston, the sun shines consistently and the temperatures climb higher. There, we dry our coffee on metal wire trays suspended three feet above the ground for proper air circulation. We opt for this method because drying coffee on the ground presents quality risks: beans dried on the ground or floor won’t dry evenly, and some beans will over-dry, semi-bake, or even ferment.
Finally, we let our beans rest. Our dried coffee rests for a minimum of two months to develop the complexity within those chocolatey notes. Those floral notes you find in our Rocksteady Gold and Gourmet Blend begin to take their shape during this process. Our Rocksteady Reserve is suspended in this state for a minimum of two years to produce nutty chocolates notes and a divine floral finish.
The Final Journey: Sorting, Roasting, Packaging, Distribution
After two months or even years of rest and relaxation, Rocksteady Coffee is ready for its final journey.
Before we send any coffee to you, we sort those beans again to remove any sour beans, stones, or any other defects.
We then roast and cool our coffee before packaging it quickly in our custom-printed foil packs.
As quickly as possible, we then fulfill your orders. We aim to sort, roast, and ship our coffee within 10 days after hulling, which gives the beans enough time to develop the flavors without running the risk of deterioration in quality.
Many of our orders travel only a few miles to luxury hotels and Jamaican specialty retailers, meaning our beans spend most of their life on our beautiful island. However, a select portion of our harvest is available to our global customers, who receive their coffee within just 20 days after roasting.
Because of our processes, we move our green coffee beans quickly, never leaving them in storage. For the vast majority of coffee producers, this is impossible. Every step up to roasting contributes to the much higher yield they require to achieve economies of scale. The result is a bean that deteriorates and loses its flavor before it even reaches the roasting stage.
Every Detail is a Step on the Path to Perfection
When we talk about how unique Rocksteady Coffee is and how close we come to producing the perfect coffee, we’re not talking about marketing. Our Blue Mountain home is a little slice of heaven, and it is truly a gift. But Rocksteady Coffee isn’t an accident or a coincidence: it’s a deliberate and careful choice combined with the wonderful skill of our farmers and partners.
So, next time someone asks: what’s so special about Rocksteady Coffee, you have an answer. It’s not just the flavor profiles or the rarity of the beans: it’s everything.
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