Monday · 5:40 am · Brunswick
The drum is lit at twenty to six. By noon 247 bags are sealed and stamped, and by Tuesday afternoon they are in the post.
The roast
One coffee means one roast profile, and fifty-two chances a year to get it exactly the same. We roast it light, for filter, and pull it at 204 °C, about ninety seconds after first crack.
Every batch is logged against the one before it: charge temperature, time to first crack, time from crack to drop. If batch five runs eight seconds long, it goes in the log and someone finds out why before next Monday.
We do not blend batches to average them out. Each bag carries its batch number beside the date.
Beans rest in open bins for two hours to let the first rush of gas out, then go into valve bags: the gas can leave, air cannot get in.
The date goes on in red by hand, because a printed date is the easiest thing in the world to leave on a bag for a year.
The measurement
One dose from the new roast, and one from each of the four before it, bloomed side by side with 15 g of grounds and 45 g of water at 94 °C. We read the rise off a steel rule at the centre of the bed and time how long the dome holds above half its height. Three lots of those readings give the curve below; the simulation on the home page runs on it.
| Age | CO₂ left | Rise, mm | Held, s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 98% | 10.8 | 45 |
| Day 4 | 91% | 10.1 | 42 |
| Day 7 | 83% | 9.4 | 39 |
| Day 14 | 65% | 7.6 | 32 |
| Day 21 | 49% | 6.0 | 26 |
| Day 30 | 34% | 4.3 | 19 |
| Day 45 | 17% | 2.3 | 13 |
| Day 60 | 8% | 1.2 | 10 |
| Day 90 | 2% | 0.3 | 8 |
Brighter rows are the month we would drink it in: day 4 to day 30.
Whole bean only
Grinding opens up the inside of the bean. The gas that would have taken a month to leave a whole bean is mostly gone from ground coffee within the hour, and it takes the aromatics with it.
A bag we ground on Monday would bloom on Thursday like the one on the right of the home page. A cheap burr grinder does more for your coffee than anything we could do in the roastery.
The green room
Green coffee is a seed, and it keeps like one. In lined sacks, in a room held at 17 °C and 55 per cent humidity, it will taste almost the same in March as it did when it landed.
Each Monday we weigh out 72 kilos, and that is the only coffee in the building that is ever older than a week.
