How We Roast
Every Roast Is a Decision. Here's How We Make Them.
Most coffee is roasted to a colour. We roast to a profile — a precise curve of temperature over time, logged, reviewed, and repeated until it's right. This isn't perfectionism for its own sake. It's the only way to consistently get the best out of a green bean that's already travelled thousands of miles to get here. What happens in the roaster in the next twelve to fifteen minutes determines everything you taste in the cup.
The Dry End
Before flavour can develop, the bean has to lose its moisture. Green coffee carries around 10–12% moisture by weight. In the early phase of the roast, the drum heat is almost entirely absorbed by that water — the bean temperature rises slowly as the moisture drives off. This is the driest, most industrial part of the roast, and it's easy to rush. Get it wrong and you compress everything that follows: the aromatics don't have room to build, and the bean starts colouring before it's structurally ready. We track the rate of temperature rise throughout this phase to make sure the energy input is steady and controlled before the chemistry begins.
The Maillard Reaction
Around 150°C, the bean starts to change colour and the roast starts to smell like something. This is the Maillard reaction — the same process that browns bread or sears meat. Sugars and amino acids are reacting under heat, producing hundreds of aromatic compounds: early florals, toasted grain, hints of sweetness. What you're smelling in a roastery at this point is the flavour potential being built into the bean. The rate at which we move through this stage shapes the complexity of the final cup — too fast and you volatilise the delicate aromatics before they've properly formed; too slow and you bake the life out of them.
First Crack
At roughly 196–205°C, the bean cracks. It's audible — a sound like a gentle popcorn pop, working through the batch over thirty seconds or a minute. What's happening physically is that the cellular structure of the bean ruptures as the internal pressure builds: steam, CO₂, and the expansion of the bean itself. The bean increases in size by around 50–60%. Caramelisation accelerates here, and the roast transitions from heat absorption to an increasingly exothermic process. First crack is the point where the roast becomes time-critical, and it's where attention matters most.
Development Time Ratio (DTR)
DTR is the percentage of total roast time that falls between first crack and the moment the beans drop into the cooling tray. It's the single most important variable in setting the character of a roast. A DTR that's too short and the coffee will taste underdeveloped — sharp, grassy, thin. Too long and the sugars over-caramelise, the brightness fades, and you lose the origin character the bean was grown for. For most of our roasts we're working in the 16–22% range, adjusted for the density and moisture content of each origin. Robert fitted the roaster with his own heat probes and runs logging software on every batch — because if you can't measure it, you can't control it, and if you can't control it, you can't repeat it.
What This Means in the Cup
Controlling these four stages precisely means the coffee you order from us today tastes the same as the bag you loved six months ago — and the one you'll order six months from now. It means the brightness in an Ethiopian natural is intentional, not accidental. The body in a Colombian washed is where we wanted it to be. We roast in small batches in Strangford, Northern Ireland, and every roast profile is logged, reviewed, and adjusted before the next batch runs. The data keeps it consistent. The passion keeps it honest.