Noted Coffee Roasters – Discover How Delicious Coffee Can Be

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Noted Coffee Roasters is a small batch specialty coffee roaster from Grafton Ohio (near Cleveland) focused on helping you find coffee that you absolutely love. Not just coffee that you put up with to get a quick caffeine fix, but coffee that is so good that you think about drinking it in the morning before you go to bed at night.

Where to Buy: Pick up a bag from the new Meijer Fairfax Market or Made Cleveland in the Cleveland Heights area, order below for pickup in Grafton or to ship nationwide, or check out other locations you can find Noted Coffee Roasters here.

Find Me At

Slow Train Cafe
the local coffee and tea
The Local Coffee & Tea

Grounded Yoga & Wellness
Cawley’s Confections
Franklin Brewing Company

Who is Noted Coffee Roasters?

My name is Scotty and I like to share delicious coffee with people.

I set out over ten years ago to discover what coffee I liked best, starting with local stores, quickly moving on to coffee from nearby coffee shops and then trying coffees from various roasters throughout the US and taking detailed cupping notes (hence “Noted”).

About 4 years ago I started home roasting coffee and was surprised that I liked coffee that I roasted as much or more than coffee I could find from other roasters. I then started Noted Coffee Roasters in 2019 as a way to share this passion for coffee with others and to help others explore their own coffee preferences. In 2021 I started roasting using a commercial machine in Cleveland, Ohio which has allowed me to scale my operations while still having complete control over every batch. I am working towards setting up a commercial roaster on my property in Grafton – your support helps me work towards that goal!

Photo of Scotty the owner of Noted Coffee Roasters
Hey that’s me!

Whether you are a coffee lover looking for a single bag of excellent single-origin specialty coffee roasted with care and precision from a Cleveland coffee roaster, or a coffee shop looking for coffee your customers will love, I am convinced that you will be happy sourcing your coffee from me. If you are local, I can do local pickup for any coffee orders and often do bulk deliveries depending on quantities. You can also order my coffee online and have it shipped to you quickly, anywhere in the USA.

While there are many specific qualities that make some coffees better than others, I believe we all have unique tastes and have different things we are looking for in each cup of coffee. I want to help you find what coffee you like best, not just what I like best or what some expert says is best. If you like my coffee, great! If you don’t that’s ok too, I’d love to chat about coffee with you either way – check out my coffee roaster page on Instagram @notedcoffeeroasters and send me a DM!

Read more about Noted Coffee Roasters here.

Scotty Wohlwend
Owner/Roaster/Coffee Doer

Buy Coffee Online Below!

You can order coffee online from what I have in stock below. I am a Cleveland coffee roaster but I ship my whole bean coffee year-round anywhere in the US, shipping coffee from Northeast Ohio near Cleveland. I also do local pickup if you are near Grafton, Ohio. I generally stock some of my favorites and bestsellers and mix in new coffees as I am able to, but if you have any coffee requests for me to roast, let me know!

Are you a coffee shop, diner, cafe, or other business looking for coffee to serve your customers? Fill out a wholesale coffee inquiry to find out our wholesale specialty coffee offerings.

Wholesale specialty coffee from a Cleveland coffee roaster

Are you a coffee shop or cafe looking for better coffee to serve your customers? Or a business looking for a better coffee to serve your employees? I roast wholesale specialty coffee starting in 5 pound increments and can roast up to 100 pounds per week or more depending on your needs, delivering locally in the greater Cleveland area. If you are not in the Cleveland area I can also ship wholesale. You can contact me here for more information on my wholesale specialty coffee.

Why buy coffee from a local coffee roaster?

Apart from the shivers of glee that you may get from supporting a local small business, there are good reason to buy your coffee from a local coffee roaster. Here are a few:

  • Coffee from local roasters is usually more fresh than coffee you would find elsewhere in a big chain such as a grocery store. Local roasters generally will put a roast date on the bag so that you know exactly when the coffee was roasted. If you are shopping for coffee and see a bag with a “best by” date and no roast date, stay the heck away from it! That stuff is not fresh. The best coffee is within 1-6 weeks, staying pretty tasty for about 3 months if whole bean coffee and sealed properly.
  • Buying from a local coffee roaster can allow you to build a relationship with the roaster and learn more about the coffees that you drink.
  • Local coffee roasters often have more options for varieties of coffees and can switch out from one single origin coffee to another single origin coffee more easily. This means more versatility in coffee options. Larger chains usually establish a specific “taste” they want to achieve, and often get it by creating blends of multiple origins for consistency. This causes the coffee to lose some of the uniqueness of the individual origins.
Billy Puckett
Billy Puckett
2023-09-07
I ordered a couple of different roasts to try from Noted Coffee Roasters and they were both fantastic. Really balanced and flavorful, and it was on my doorstep in Baltimore within a couple of days.
Jonah Temple
Jonah Temple
2023-09-07
Roasts the best coffee I've had in Ohio! Met him at the 2022 Columbus Coffee Festival and have been ordering beans since. The light roast Kenya beans are me and my wife's favorite
Stephie Armbruster
Stephie Armbruster
2023-09-07
Best cup of coffee I've ever had in my life, I had no idea coffee was actually supposed to taste this good! Cannot recommend enough, must try!!
John U
John U
2023-09-06
I’m so happy I found Noted; they’re one of the few roasters in Ohio doing an incredible job profiling nice single origin coffees. The Kenya AA Kabngetuny was exceptional and is still to date one of the best profiled Kenya’s I’ve had in a few years. I can’t wait for Noted to open a brick & mortar location some day!
Jason Plank
Jason Plank
2023-09-06
I was introduced to Noted Coffee Roasters through a farmers market. It has become a frequented staple in my whole bean arsenal! Consistently roasted from lot to lot with high quality beans. Ordering online is a snap, with fast shipping and great customer service...

What to look for when ordering good coffee?

Good coffee is fresh and has a roast date marked on it. I recommend getting coffee within 6 weeks of the roast date, some will say sooner, others will say later, but 99% of coffee drinkers will not be able to taste a significant difference for the first 6 weeks post-roast.

Avoid coffees and coffee roasters that are “gourmet” or “artisan” and offer flavored coffees. If coffee needs to be flavored, it is not high enough quality to be considered specialty coffee. Gourmet coffee is pre-third-wave, meaning it is the older way of roasting prior to specialty coffee roasting that generally roasts dark, blended, slightly cheaper coffees. Artisan coffee doesn’t really mean much anymore, but it generally is not used in the specialty coffee community. There are plenty of these coffees and they have their place, consider them middle or bottom shelf coffee as opposed to the top shelf specialty.

If you get a bag of beans that is really oily, avoid that roaster as well. Roasting coffees dark (beyond roughly 420 degrees) results in oils being release from the beans. My darkest roast (dark roast Sumatra) is plenty dark but it only has a bit of oils for two reasons – it is only roasted just to the point that it needs to in order to achieve a “dark” taste without losing the characteristics of the bean itself, and it is fresh. The longer coffee sits the more oily it becomes. So really oily coffee is too dark and likely too old to be a good coffee. Now if you decide you like dark oily coffees, that is perfectly fine! You just won’t necessarily be the target audience for specialty coffee. I still recommend trying my Sumatra and see if you like it even a bit more. I have turned a lot of French Roast/Italian Roast lovers into Sumatra specialty coffee lovers in my area. That may be just the place to start for you. If so, you can order some Dark Roast Sumatra Specialty coffee here.

What makes a Specialty Coffee Roaster?

roasting specialty coffee
Roasting specialty coffee takes care and attention to detail

Specialty coffee is a term that means that coffee is high quality (rated above 80 points on the SCAA coffee rating scale), and is sourced and roasted specifically to achieve a particular taste, as opposed to more traditional commercial roasting that sources cheaper coffee as a commodity, blends it together, and roasts it super fast in really large batches to achieve maximum consistency and profitability.

Specialty coffee is generally manually picked from the coffee trees an manually sorted to remove any unripe coffee cherries, resulting in a better quality coffee.

What About Third Wave Coffee?

Yes, I am also a third wave coffee roaster. Third wave coffee and Specialty coffee are often used interchangeably but they are different – coffee can only be considered specialty if it has been graded as specialty via the SCAA. But both third wave coffee and specialty coffee serve the purpose of producing quality, traceable coffees that highlight the flavor characteristics of the coffee origin and the coffee bean, as opposed to covering it up via a blend or a dark roast. If you are looking for some really good third wave coffee from Cleveland, try my Kenya Kabngetuny light roast!

Why Is Noted Coffee Roasters a specialty coffee roaster and a third wave coffee roaster?

I am a specialty coffee roaster because I care about coffee, the way it tastes, and I just love sharing a cup of coffee with someone (well… not really sharing a single cup… please use your own mug). There is something really special to me about drinking a delicious and unique cup of coffee not unlike watching a great movie for the first time or experiencing some breathtaking view in nature. I roast third wave coffee because I love experiencing something new and surprising when I try my coffee, not just experiencing the standard dark roast coffee taste. I want to share that experience with you and have you also feel what it is like to not just drink a cup of coffee in the morning with a slosh of milk while absentmindedly browsing the latest reels on Instagram, and instead be fully present with a coffee that can stimulate all of your senses and bring you to a joyful full presence with it. Ok enough coffee jabber, time to order coffee!

Do coffee subscriptions save money?

Yes, in most cases it is cheaper for coffee roasters to be able to roast in bulk and plan ahead for a monthly coffee order than to react to an impromptu order, thus ordering coffee via a coffee subscription is often cheaper. In my case you save $1 per 12 ounce bag, or $3 off of the already discounted 5lb bulk bag when you subscribe for coffee. Plus if you know about how much coffee you go through each month then you don’t have to remember to place an order each month, so you get extra savings and less hassle, and I get a better prediction on future orders and a reliable stream of income for my coffee business (hey that sounds nice!)

Where to buy specialty coffee online?

Shopping for specialty coffee can be overwhelming since there are so many choices. There are so many coffee origins, and then within each origin there are different coffee farms, coffee processing stations, different coffee varieties grown, different processing methods, etc. that lead to an endless combination of potentials for green coffee for roasters. And that is before the coffee is roasted. Specialty coffee roasters can make a ton of choices in how they roast a particular coffee, not just choosing from light roast, medium roast, and dark roast. And that is just for single origin coffees. There is also a limitless number of combinations of coffees that can be blended to make a coffee blend.

So if you are trying to find good specialty coffee to order, where do you start? My recommendation is to start with your general coffee tastes, and then find a local coffee roaster or a roaster that you can order from online that offers a variety of coffees that match your general preferences.

If you live in Northeast Ohio and you want to shop local you have a lot of options of good local coffee roasters. I won’t pretend that Noted Coffee Roasters is the only good Ohio coffee roaster – it may be the best coffee in Cleveland according to some, and others may disagree – I love a bunch of Ohio coffee roasters such as Duck-Rabbit, Rising Star, Six Shooter to name a few, all of which are near Cleveland. They helped me develop my coffee tastes over the years by offering a good variety of single origin coffees. There are great roasters all over Ohio, all over the US and all over the world. I had an amazing coffee from the DRC from Pennycup in Asheville, NC over a year ago that I still remember. I also won’t pretend to have a monopoly on good tasting Sumatran, Guatemalan or Kenyan coffees. You can find other good coffees if you spend some time looking. I drink my own coffee about 95% of the time, but I love trying coffee from other roasters as well. I just bought a bag of coffee from a roaster I met when I was vending at the Columbus Coffee Festival last week actually.

But I am convinced that you will also be very happy if you choose to order coffee from me. Do you like smooth coffee that tastes good with cream or black? Try my Sumatran dark roast. Do you like complex fruity and floral coffees that have a pleasant tangy acidity? Try my Kenyan medium light roast. Do you like a smooth balanced cinnamon nutty coffee? Try my Peru medium light roast. Do you like bold chocolate in you coffee? Try my Guatemalan medium roast coffee. Looking for a good decaf coffee without chemical processing? Try my Decaf Peru.

Every day I get to wake up and enjoy amazing coffee, and I am serious about wanting to share that experience with you too. Questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out.

How do you figure out what coffee you like?

What if you don’t know what kind of coffee you like? You may just know that you like dark roasted coffee, or coffee from Central America, or just fruity and floral light roasted coffees. Or maybe you don’t even know that, just that you like to drink something smooth and dark with a good dose of cream and sugar. Start with the most basic qualities that you like about coffee, and then find a coffee to order that most closely matches that, and then see what you think. If you keep trying new coffees and comparing them (make sure to take notes!) you will eventually reach a point where you know exactly what you like in a coffee.

You can also look for a local coffee shop or local coffee roaster that offers single origin coffees – don’t bother with coffee shops that don’t have any single origin coffees if you are trying to narrow down what specialty coffee you like – you won’t be able to pinpoint your tastes very easily from a blend. This is especially helpful if they rotate coffees regularly. Then try out all of the different coffees that you can (and again take notes!)

I challenge you to try a different coffee every month or so and within a year I bet you will have a much better idea of what coffee you like.

You can also use my free printable coffee tasting wheel or my free printable coffee journal to keep track of the coffees that you like over time. That way you can keep track of exactly what a given coffee tastes like and what you like about it for future reference.

How you do you improve your daily coffee brew?

If you are at square one and you buy pre-ground coffee to put in a drip coffee maker and want to learn how to make your daily cup of coffee taste better, here are some simple tips that you can try in order:

  • Get a conical burr grinder and grind your coffee daily directly before brewing. This will drastically improve the freshness of your coffee, and will give you higher quality coffees to choose from (most higher quality coffees are whole bean, though plenty of specialty coffee roasters offer to grind prior to shipping). I like the Baratza Encore personally (and they don’t even pay me referrals yet!), but you can get one in the $50 range that should be just fine.
  • Use a kitchen scale to measure both water and coffee to achieve an ideal and consistent ratio of water to coffee. Using a tablespoon is fairly inconsistent, and often results in coffee either way too concentrated, or way too weak. 17:1 is my ideal water to coffee ratio, but you may span from 13:1 to 20:1 or beyond. But you won’t know until you start weighing your coffee and water! I love this kitchen scale, I have 3 of them.
  • Brew using a manual technique such as a Chemex, Hario V60 dripper, French Press, or Aeropress. While it may take some practice, manual techniques can always result in better coffee than automated drip brewers, unless you have a super high end machine. If you do you are probably already fairly particular about how you brew your coffee. It doesn’t take as long as you might think to brew manually. I make coffee via Chemex and Hario v60 every time I drink coffee. I got rid of my drip coffee maker years ago after I had settled into a nice setup with manual coffee brewing.

What do you need in order to brew coffee manually?

Here is the bare bones setup for making a single cup of coffee. You can swap the Hario v60 for another over the cup dripper, or Chemex and corresponding filters.

  • Hario v60 dripper
  • size 01 filters for dripper
  • kitchen scale
  • measuring cup to hold coffee beans
  • conical burr grinder
  • gooseneck kettle
  • some kinda mug to brew into
  • whole bean coffee

Random stuff about me

If you’ve made it this far, either you are pretty interested in my coffee, or maybe you know me personally. But if not here is a bit more about me. My name is Scotty Wohlwend and I am currently a full time programmer. I am working towards becoming a full time coffee roaster and artist. Towards that means I am working on creative ways to build revenue to be able to step out of the traditional 9-5 and into a more flexible life. If you want to support me you can first of all, buy a bag of coffee, and secondly you could support my random other endeavors. Here is my psychedelic art Instagram where you can buy prints, subscribe to support my art, etc. Here is my silly site on is it a full moon today that I am working to generate ad revenue through if it gets enough traction. I’ll have more links coming as I continue to get creative.

Back to Coffee Roasting

Man, I could talk about this stuff all day. Want help making your coffee better? Feel free to reach out below. For more tidbits about coffee that you may not know, check out my Coffee Beans – tidbits you may not know article.

Questions? Comments? Send me a message below.