New for 2025: Roasting 201
Registration for Roasting 201 in Minneapolis is now open. This advanced-level roasting course will cover more technical roasting skills, sensory exercises, machine maintenance, and business strategies. If you've already taken Roasting 101 with us or have been working as a production roaster for more than two years with regular cupping, you are eligible to sign up for Roasting 201.
We're growing a lot this year. With the move to a new facility, expansion in our engineering and fabrication program, and the launch of new equipment, this year feels like a big leap forward for us. Students have been asking for a more advanced roasting class for a few years, and our newly opened Coffee Campus at our headquarters in NE Minneapolis is the perfect place to finally launch it.
Roasting 101 and Other Iterations
We've been teaching Roasting 101, or some version of it, for many years here at Mill City Roasters. During the height of the pandemic, we pivoted to a fully-remote Virtual Roasting 101. If you took a course with us in 2019 or earlier, you'll remember the class as Specialty Coffee Roasting for Entrepreneurs.
In all versions of this foundational skills class, our instructors presented a curriculum that was useful to both brand-new roasters and folks with some experience. Teaching high-level coffee concepts to people who've never touched a machine before is challenging, but we always tried to include topics in the class that would be educational for students even if they'd already been roasting for a few years.
Feedback on Roasting 101 has been incredible. Of the thousands of students who have completed the course, a huge percentage of them have gone on to launch successful coffee companies. The testimonies about the class speak for themselves. Attendees remark again and again that the class is fun, engaging, and very informative. See for yourself: reviews for Roasting 101 are located at the bottom of the class page on our website.
What to Expect from Roasting 201
As a class expressly designed for experienced roasted and those who have completed 101, Roasting 201 will allow us to dive into more advanced roasting topics. Students will hone their sensory skills at the cupping table with triangulation and reference cuppings as well as exercises from the Q Exam like solutions tastings.
During the two-day course, hosted on Thursday and Friday, the small class size of 12 students per session guarantees plenty of hands-on time on the roasters. Students will dive into profile creation and correction, learning to identify markers of unintended variance in a roast profile and get back on track to save the profile and the green coffee. We'll explore seasonal blend building and share tactics for forecasting, contracting, and substituting green coffee in your inventory to control costs and provide a consistent product to your wholesale and retail customers.
Our Coffee Campus features five models of roaster, ranging from the MCR500 Sample Roaster up to a production size MCR-6 with a 6kg batch capacity. Students will rotate across machines, learn to translate profiles to new systems and get real-world practice in crucial machine cleaning and preventative maintenance.
More than Training
As a behind-the-scenes role, roasters are often isolated in their work and their process. One of the many benefits of seeking ongoing professional education is the opportunity to learn with and from other roasters. Our classes at Mill City Roasters offer a sense of community and the chance to network with roasters from outside of your market. We've seen our students build friendships and lasting connections with their classmates.
Both levels of our roasting classes now offer an open Q & A discussion session, where participants bring their unique experiences to the table. Students have a chance to ask questions about branding, marketing, growing wholesale channels, scaling into retail operations, and much more. Students share valuable sales tactics, offer advice on space and equipment, and provide genuine personal recommendations for allied product suppliers like coffee packaging and roastery and cafe tools.
If 2025 is your year to challenge yourself, grow your skills, and scale your business, Roasting 201 is for you. We can't wait to show you the new space and learn together. Learn more, see upcoming dates, and view registration details here.
