Ask the Roaster
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About
The senses of sight, smell, sound and touch form the foundations of craft roasting. All of our roasting team have learned on the job, developing their awareness of these senses, learning when a coffee’s aromatics are at their height, how to caramelise the sugars, and how to unlock the flavor and personality of every coffee.
We have a collection of small but beautiful drum roasting machines at Artisan looked after by a team of passionate dedicated people. The coffee gently tumbles in these drum roasters, slowly developing its full flavour in a traditional roasting style. We also use modern technology to monitor how each coffee reacts and develops to even the most subtle change of temperature, but ultimately the decision to bring the coffee out of the roaster is down to the people we trust to roast our coffee. Working with coffee in this way is a lifelong journey and our roasting team constantly hone their craft, their passion and their skills
We invest a huge amount of time and energy in sourcing great speciality coffee and we make sure that the quality of the beans is preserved when we roast. This means roasting every lot we source in a unique way that brings its very own intrinsic quality to the fore. This roasting work starts on a small scale in our lab, trying different roast profiles, identifying flavours we want to enhance and develop and checking the results on the cupping table. We keep experimenting, keep refining the roast, and keep cupping until we’re happy to start selling the coffee in our cafes and web store. Once a coffee is on our menu we cup every single production roast to make sure you get a consistent, flavour rich and tasty brew every time.
Coffee is a seasonal product and is harvested in the tropics at different times of the year. Our dedication to great tasting coffee means we want to bring you coffee when it’s at it’s very best. This freshness comes from two different aspects of our philosophy, the green coffee we source and the roasted coffee we sell. Only selling very fresh coffee is an integral part of ensuring our passion for quality. At our roastery, hand roasting to order in small batches keeps the coffee we sell as fresh as possible. We want to make sure the aromatics are still at their peak when you buy our beans; that the taste and flavour descriptions remain true; that they shine through beautifully in your brew.
We aim to build long term relationships with our coffee growers, and work with producers who, like us, are committed to quality coffee. We visit our growers in order to cultivate and maintain such relationships, and to understand what makes their coffee unique and how their cultivars thrive. We work together to create micro-lots for the Artisan Roast portfolio – something special that represents both our growers and us.
When we visit growers we want to talk about the welfare, social and environmental conditions in place. We assess these keystones of sustainability and encourage best practice, rewarding exceptional quality with prices well above Fairtrade minimum pricing and the NY ‘C’ market. Third party accreditation is an important part of the coffee world and involves certification scheme such as organic, Fairtrade, or Rainforest Alliance. We work with both certified coffee growers and additional coffee farmers who also achieve our own high levels of ethical standards.
Dog and Hat
During the planning for one of our monthly subscriptions, we realised that we needed another roaster to come to our aid with a 4th coffee. To those that know, the 4th coffee is usually something a little unusual - so it was a tricky search. However, Dave was heading up to Scotland and Artisan Roast had a very interesting blend we wanted to try. We got the sample, loved the coffee and got them straight into the subs.
