10 steps to the perfect roast
Bean selection is only part of the story. The coffee picking and roasting process is a complicated combination of art and science that can make or break a great coffee blend. Here’s how we get your coffee from the bean to the well balanced cup of coffee you know and love:
STEP ONE: When the coffee is picked, the bean is inside a red berry that is broken down in a water bath. The pulp floats to the surface and the beans drop to the bottom of the tank.
STEP TWO: The beans are pumped out of the tank for drying. The vast majority of our coffee is air dried at the plantations for up to two weeks. Workers constantly rake through it with forks to ensure it dries evenly.
STEP THREE: After it’s dried, the bean resembles a dried pea. It is sent to the mill to remove its course skin and is then hand sorted for quality control.
STEP FOUR: The coffee beans are now ready to be shipped. They are packed into 60kg hessian sacks and sent around the world.
STEP FIVE: The hessian sacks arrive at our roasting facility in Melbourne – second to none in Australia and one of the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. The bags are cut open and the coffee goes into a hopper.
STEP SIX: The coffee goes through a three-step cleaning process that removes any stones, twigs or leaves that may have crept into the batch.
STEP SEVEN: Beans from nine regions around the world, including from the prestigious Blue Mountains of Jamaica, are electronically weighed and mixed to ensure our blend is just right.
STEP EIGHT: The beans go into the oven for roasting. The gas fire is controlled electronically to vary the heat at optimal times in the roasting process to achieve our signature flavour.
STEP NINE: The roasted beans are left to stabilise for four to seven days. This allows the starches and sugars to settle before packaging.
STEP TEN: The stabilised beans are now ready for packaging. Roasted coffee beans give off CO2 for about 100 days, so they are packaged in containers with a one-way valve to release the pressure while maintaining freshness.