Altitude: The Hidden Factor in Coffee Preparation

We explore how elevation impacts coffee growing, roasting, and brewing.

BY KALEY LEFEVRE
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Featured image courtesy of Chris Chandler/Vail Mountain Coffee & Tea Co.

What to know:

• Roasters, coffee shop owners, and coffee growers have observed how high elevation impacts coffee
• In places at high elevation, water’s boiling point is significantly lower, causing the first crack to happen faster when roasting
• Higher-grown coffee often has a deeper flavor profile, but requires different care than coffee grown at lower altitudes

Picture this: It’s a powder day with six inches of fresh snow in Colorado, and customers at cafés across the mountains are eager to warm up with a fresh cup of drip. It’s the middle of the rush, and just seconds after the barista hits “brew,” the machine starts to sputter and boil over. Hot water and grounds spill out of the sides of the filter, coating the equipment and ruining the small amount of drip coffee that was left inside.

This ill-fated scene is a potential reality for coffee shops at high elevation. With higher altitudes comes thinner air, meaning that coffee shops above sea level have to account for elevation in ways cafés at sea level do not. 

Chris Chantler, co-founder of Vail Mountain Coffee & Tea in Vail, Colorado, knows all too well about altitude’s relationship with coffee. His establishment operates at an elevation of 8,000 feet, making it one of the highest-altitude roasters of its size worldwide.

In Vail, water typically boils between 190 and 195 degrees, depending on the barometric pressure at the time. That’s nearly 20 degrees lower than the water boiling point used in places closer to sea level. And this difference in boiling point, it turns out, is just one of the many factors to consider when dealing with coffee at elevation. 

How elevation affects roasting & brewing

Thirty years ago, when Mark Overly moved from Alaska to Colorado with his Sivitz fluid bed roaster in tow, he thought it would be easy to replicate the flavor profiles he’d created in Anchorage.

But during his initial attempts to roast at mile-high elevation, his machine behaved bizarrely. There suddenly seemed to be less power available, less efficient heat transfer, and therefore less ability to roast the beans properly. The fact that Mark was using a fluid bed roaster rather than a drum roaster is negligible, considering the issue was with the amount of power getting to the machine. 

The problem, Mark realized, was surrounding him. The air, or the amount of combustible oxygen in the air, is what was creating that power gap. With less combustible oxygen available, no matter how high he turned up the gas, the roaster couldn’t keep up.

“I had a specific taste profile that I was expecting, so (I was) like, ‘Why am I not getting it? Why is this not working?’ So it all became these problems to be solved,” says Mark. 

Over time, he realized he needed to reduce the roaster’s capacity by about 18%, adjust the charge weight according to the atmosphere’s influence, and take a look at the energy going to his air flow. Once those factors were dialed in, he was back to his tried and true roast profiles.

Meanwhile, in places just above sea level like Athens, Georgia, roasters aren’t thinking about altitude and barometric pressure at all. 

Charlie Mustard, roaster for Jittery Joe’s in Athens, uses a Diedrich drum roaster at about 600 feet of elevation. With that minimal altitude, atmospheric density isn’t much of a worry, but the humidity is. “If you think about the air here, it’s really humid, and there’s that moisture in the air as well. Also, the boiling temperature is higher, so you just need more energy here than you do (at elevation),” Charlie says. 

In Athens, the first crack happens as the moisture in the bean approaches 212 degrees. In Vail, first crack happens much earlier due to the lower boiling point. Chris said that, in his opinion, this difference in temperature is what sets the flavor profiles of some beans apart from others.

“Once that coffee goes through pyrolysis, that’s when we really start to caramelize the sugars in the coffee, and we’re caramelizing those sugars at a much lower temperature in a much more controlled environment, to the point where we can develop some really deep, rich flavor profiles,” he says. 

How elevation affects growing

Altitude’s influence on coffee starts far before it gets to the roaster. 

Coffee farms throughout the world sit across a range of altitudes, with varying farming techniques adding to the varieties of beans available. The farms sitting in high-altitude areas attract some coffee connoisseurs who believe that those beans are superior due to their inherent flavors.

“It has been my experience that higher-grown coffee has a deeper taste profile a lot of times, but you can have a high-grown coffee that somebody doesn’t know how to take care of and that they don’t process right, and then it’s not good,” Charlie says. “Of course, coffee grown at lower elevations can also be good.” 

Growing at elevation can entail more work for farmers, though. Chris says it took some trial and error for some farmers he partnered with in Panama to discover that coffee grown at the highest possible elevation wasn’t good. The beans growing about 500 feet lower than those at the top of the hill were the best, possibly due to soil differences and available shade. 

“I say to everyone that it’s the farmers and the hard-working coffee farms that really put in the effort, and it’s up to us to do the best job we can to pay tribute to their efforts and bring the best cup profile out, whether you’re at sea level or at altitude,” says Chris.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kaley Lefevre (she/her) is a writer, editor, and coffee professional based in Colorado. With a background in journalism and a decade of experience in specialty coffee, she is drawn to stories about people, places, and the everyday rituals that connect them. When she’s not working on a story, she can usually be found exploring new cafés, working on her Substack, or planning her next adventure. You can find her on LinkedIn, Substack, and Threads.

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