Roast Summit Portland 2026
Explore the Sessions
Roast Summit Portland features educational sessions designed for coffee professionals across roasting, sourcing, production, quality, and business operations. Whether you're looking for practical takeaways, technical insights, or fresh perspectives from industry experts, our sessions are built to spark ideas and meaningful conversation.
Current Sessions
Explore our current lineup of sessions below, with additional topics and speakers to be announced.
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Meet the Speaker | Nicki Amouri
A roast profile is made up of many decisions—each one important for creating the best tasting coffee and each one important for maximizing roast output. Learn where to push the limits in your roast profile—whether it’s your charge temperature, your turn around temperature, your heat application, or all of the above. Learn how making tweaks in these areas affects the number one thing: taste!
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Meet the Speaker: Scott Merle
Processing is one of the most important factors shaping coffee flavor, influencing sweetness, acidity, body, flavors and overall balance. In this session, we will taste and compare coffees processed through different methods and explore how decisions made after harvest affect the final cup.
Designed for coffee roasters, cuppers and marketers, this session will connect sensory experience with practical sourcing and roasting insight. We will look at how washed, honey, natural, and other processing styles influence flavor expression, consistency, and customer appeal. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how processing contributes to cup profile and how to communicate these differences more effectively to customers. -
Meet the Speaker | Luiz Severo
Where chemical safety meets specialty coffee quality? In this session, we will explore how thermal control manages undesirable heat-induced byproducts. Connecting food science to industrial practice, we will analyze the influence of the pyrolysis process and chemical degradation. Discover the impact of roasting profiles, time, and temperature on mitigating contaminants while preserving sensory complexity. Join us to understand scientific strategies that protect bean integrity, enhance quality control, and elevate your coffee's safety standards.
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Meet the Speakers | Steve Lee, Vera Espindola, Serena Beze
Terms like Direct Trade, Direct Sourcing, and Relationship Coffee are often used to describe closer connections between roasters, producers, and exporters—but what actually makes those relationships successful over time?
This panel discussion explores the realities behind sourcing partnerships and the factors that shape long-term value for everyone involved. Through perspectives from producing communities, sourcing relationships, and producer engagement, attendees will examine how trust, communication, economics, and power dynamics influence coffee buying relationships in ways that are not always visible.
Rather than viewing relationship coffee as automatically equitable or transparent, this conversation asks deeper questions around expectations, sustainability, risk, and shared responsibility. Participants will gain practical insights for approaching sourcing relationships with greater awareness and understanding, while exploring what meaningful partnership can look like beyond marketing language.
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Meet the Speaker | Barbara Jordan
You may be more familiar with coffees from Central and South America than those from African origins. In East Africa, Kenyan and Ethiopian coffees are better known than coffees from other countries in the region.
Come learn about coffee sourced from two neighboring countries in East Africa: Burundi and Rwanda. Despite sharing a border and similar geography, the countries’ people and coffee industries have developed in different ways, given their quite separate histories. In this workshop, we will discuss typical roasting styles for these high-altitude (1,200-1,800 MASL) East African coffees, as well as cup together three distinctive coffees from Rwanda, and four coffees harvested from provinces across Burundi. We follow the new CVA protocols for cupping. Learning Outcomes:
Learn the stories from both Burundi and Rwanda history and its impact on their coffees.
Gain knowledge about the farmers who cultivate these coffees and how coffee benefits their communities.
Understand the unique flavor profiles for seven coffees from the Great Lakes Region.
Learn about typical roasting approaches for high-altitude coffees.
Recognize the differences among Burundian and Rwandan coffees through a guided cupping session.
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