How We Roast Our Coffee
Time to give you some background info as to how we roast our coffee. Having our own artisan roastery right here in the North East of Scotland has been a great way for us to experiment with our own coffee blends, as well as giving us full control over the roasting process.
Every single bag of our coffee you buy online is stamped with our logo by hand, so you know that we are guaranteeing quality every time.
How we roast SYMPOSIUM coffee
It takes us 30 minutes to roast a batch of our SIGNATURE coffee in our artisan roastery. Here’s the method we use to get the perfect medium roast every time:
1. First thing in the morning, we switch on the roaster and wait until it reaches the charge temperature of 160 degrees celsius.
The charge temperature is the temperature we want the roastery to be at when we put the beans in. If the roaster starts out lower than this temperature, the beans will be in too long (so will take too long to roast). Above this temperature, the beans will be scorched.
Depending on the roaster, it can take a bit of trial-and-error to find what works, but this is what works for us!
2. We pre-mix the different types of coffee beans that make up the SYMPOSIUM blend, meaning we mix our recipe before it goes in the roaster. The alternative would be to roast individual batches of beans and mix them afterwards. There are a lot of pros and cons for each method, so it is often down to what works best for you. We find that, although you do get some variance in artisan roasting, pre-mixing our beans helps minimise this.
3. We put the beans in the roaster, and the temperature starts to reduce to around 120 degrees, otherwise known as the drop temperature. The temperature drop is due to the moisture in the beans.
4. After a bit of time, the temperature starts to rise again. Once it gets to around 180 degrees, you get the “first crack”. This signifies that the majority of the moisture has been evaporated, and the beans will increase in size.
5. After the first crack, the pre-cooling process begins. This is when the machine takes in cold air and the temperature inside rises to around 200 degrees.
6. The roasting is finished and the roaster starts cooling down. Once it reaches around 98 degrees, the coffee is ready!
Our Method for Roasting Coffee
And that’s all there is to it (mostly – we don’t want to give away all our secrets!) We roast coffee around 3-5 times a week since we like to send it out the day after we roast it. We always try to have our coffee roasted, packaged & posted within a day.
If you place an order for coffee online, we try to ensure it arrives at your door within 3 days of roasting. This means it’s a lot fresher than what you’d get from the supermarket!