How WeRoast
Notes on heat, patience and the four minutes that decide everything.
Ira Mankame
Head of Roasting
Roasting coffee is a long conversation with a machine that answers in smell. This is how that conversation goes on an average Tuesday at Roastora — from green bean to sealed tin, and every degree in between.
The green room
Every batch starts in the green room, where sacks of beans sit for a full week after landing. Coffee is alive when it arrives — still breathing off moisture from processing — and it will punish you if you roast it in its first days out of the sack. We cup every lot at 48 hours to decide what it wants to become: a filter roast, an espresso, or something we quietly sell as the Seasonal Special.
The turn
We charge the drum at 204°C — hot enough that the first crack arrives with confidence. For eight to eleven minutes the beans tumble in a circle, going from wet grass smell, to toasted bread, to that unmistakable moment when the sugars caramelise and everything in the room turns sweet. The turn is the last 40 seconds. This is where roast level lives, where 8°C separates a bright Morning Roast from a syrupy Dark Matter.
The drum does not care about your mood. It only cares about your attention.
The rest
Fresh-roasted coffee is a terrible version of itself. It needs four to seven days off-gas before the flavours settle into something you would want to drink. Every bag you buy from us carries its roast date in cream ink on the back — and a gentle suggestion to open it on day five, not day one.
“The drum does not care about your mood. It only cares about your attention.”
- Drum temp
- 204°C charge
- Batch size
- 12 kg
- First crack
- 9:30 – 10:10
- Development
- 18 – 22%