Inside theRoastery

The green room

Cool, dark and slightly humid, the green room holds about two tonnes of coffee in hessian sacks, each stamped with its lot number. This is where every batch begins its Roastora life: weighed, moisture-tested and cupped at a table that has seen roughly nine thousand cups of coffee. The green room smells of nothing. Give it eight minutes next door, however, and the story changes.

The drum

The heart of the building is a 12-kilo drum roaster from the 1980s, rebuilt twice, older than half the staff, and it still holds temperature within two degrees across a full roast. The machine is painted forest green because the previous owner lost a bet. We have kept the paint job for luck.

If the roastery is quiet, something is wrong. If it smells of caramel, everything is right.

The cupping table

Every roasted batch is cupped the morning after, blind, against the last three batches of the same lot. If a batch drifts from its curve — a scorched note, a baked undertone — it becomes staff coffee and the tin never leaves the building. Roughly one batch in forty takes this honourable exit.

The pack-out bench

The final room is the smallest: a long bench, a scale, a heat sealer and a shelf of tins. Bags are filled, stamped with roast date, sealed and put on the shelf to rest for five days before the label goes on. It is the most boring room in the building and the one we are proudest of, because boring is what consistency looks like from the inside.