Jakub Jandík is not just a man who stands at the roasting rack in Goriffee. He is the Slovak Cup Tasting Champion (2019), former co-founder of the cult Mad Drop and a man who has a decade of experience in the coffee world behind him. In this interview, we took a look inside his head – at how he thinks about taste, his responsibility to farmers and whether there is such a thing as perfect coffee.
The title of Slovak Cup Tasting Champion (2019) proves that you have an exceptional taste memory. Does this ability to “imagine” the taste of coffee during roasting help you when you only see the curves on the monitor, or is the final cupping a surprise for you sometimes?
It is complex and not entirely straightforward. There are some coffees that taste very good even though the roasting doesn’t go quite as expected, but there are some things that can be salvaged. But there are also coffees that surprise, and unfortunately, it happens in a negative sense. Sometimes the raw material that arrives at the roastery doesn’t taste as clean and juicy as the sample we picked months before. Time, storage and transport are all important factors in preserving taste.
Goriffee builds real relationships with farmers and regularly visits them on the farm. When you’re roasting coffee from someone you’ve met in person, do you feel a greater psychological responsibility to ‘not mess it up’?
I guess so. I felt it especially now that we had Indonesia from Hendra. I was at his house as a guest, and as we roasted that coffee, memories surfaced and I took it more or less as my own – with the feeling that it was also thanks to me that it made it into our production. But I try to approach every coffee in the same responsible way. Having been on the farm, I can get a more realistic idea of the conditions in which those people live and work to produce these taste experiences for us.
How does the process of finding that “chosen” profile work? Do you strive for absolute transparency of terroir, or do you consciously tailor the profile to the customer?
This process starts with the sampling process, when we know exactly whether the coffee will go into the filter, the espresso, or the blend. Thanks to our extensive experience and the fact that we have mapped different regions and processing types, we can determine the right roasting style quite quickly. My general philosophy is that the coffee should be well balanced, fruity, sweet and with a clean cup finish. I want to roast coffee in a way that is accessible to everyone – from the professional to the grandma in the kitchen who just pours it. So it’s a combination of respect for how the coffee was grown, with the goal of “making it good” for the end customer.
You’ve been in the coffee world for over a decade. When you compare what we considered ‘top coffee’ in the past with what you’re roasting today – have we moved on?
We have certainly moved forward. Technology is more accessible and of higher quality. In terms of tastes, I remember when Simon competed in 2019, they had crazy 300-hour fermented coffees that were extremely intense. I don’t see that as often in samples nowadays, the scene has smoothed out a bit. But producers are always trying to invent something new. Coffee is changing over time – there’s a lot more variety today than in my early days, when classic ‘naturals’ dominated and there wasn’t as much choice.
What is the specific “Goriffee DNA” by which someone would recognize your work in a blind test?
If I were to define our signature, it is a coffee that is “well developed”, with a distinct sweetness, fruitiness and clean profile. We pride ourselves on making sure that our selection is not just for a select few, but that it is understandable to all. We strive to include diverse and fresh coffees that satisfy every palate. So if someone can experience perfect balance and purity in a cup , without needing high-end technology to prepare it, then that’s exactly what I strive for at Goriffee. In short: to really enjoy the coffee.
Most people only see successful packages on the shelf. But what happens in the roastery when a batch doesn’t turn out as expected? Is it hard for a roaster to admit a mistake?
Of course, every failed batch makes a person personally sorry and angry. It’s a great shame about the raw material, especially if it’s expensive specialty coffee. Fortunately, thanks to years of experience and the fact that we have the different regions and processes already well “mapped out”, we can eliminate the mistakes considerably. But it happens – I’m not a machine and sometimes technology intervenes. For example, once during roasting, the fuses blew and the whole “batch” had to go, sorry, to hell. At times like that , it’s important to own up to the mistake, although thankfully it doesn’t happen often.
Mad Drop was energetic and rebellious, while roasting is a solitary activity. Have you found your “zen” in roasting, or do you sometimes miss the hustle and bustle of a coffee shop?
Working in a café is undoubtedly more dynamic, faster and full of communication with people. Working at the roaster is really lonelier, but I actually quite enjoy it. In some ways it’s similar to espresso extraction for me – I have to weigh everything, check the values and then hand the result over to the customer. Sometimes I miss the coffee shop buzz, but then I just go to an event, make a few cappuccinos and an espresso, and that’s totally fulfilling for me for now.
You stood behind the bar for years. How does this experience influence you now that you are a roaster? Does it help you “tailor” your coffee so that baristas can work with it better?
It certainly does. My philosophy is to roast the coffee so that they don’t have to “fiddle” with it at home or in the shop . I don’t want the selection to be only for a narrow group of people with high-end technology. Even though it’s a pick, it shouldn’t just be for select people. I want it to be able to be made great by a barista, but also by a grandma in the kitchen with a regular grinder. My bar experience tells me that coffee needs to be well developed and balanced to make it accessible and tasty for everyone who drinks it.
The market today is full of experimental fermentations. How do you solve the dilemma between “hype” coffees and those that show the true face of the variety?
As the Wu-Tang Clan sing, “Cash rules everything around me”. At the end of the day, numbers are important, so we produce coffees that are in demand. But we have a broad portfolio, so we can also afford to have fun coffees that are simple and fruity, and at the same time beautiful, clean washed Kene or Geshe. Our goal is not to make just one type of “hype” coffee, but to offer quality and freshness that satisfies every palate – from experimenters to fans of classic terroir purity.
Is there a “perfectly roasted coffee” or is it just a myth? Which coffee from the last year are you most proud of?
The concept of perfection is very subjective. For me, the ideal is a coffee that has sweetness, fruitiness and that aforementioned “clean cup” finish that makes you happy in the cup. If I had to pick something up from recent times, I’m very happy with how Hendra’s Indonesias have come out. Whether it was carbonic maceration or anaerobic processing, I really enjoyed these coffees and I’m proud of how we managed to process them. They’re exactly the kind of taste experiences that make me do this work.
Currently we also offer 3+1 bundle and we are selling off the last remnants of our popular Christmas Brewing Blend.
