Fifth generation in the industry I personally roast all the beans we supply with my trusty Probat roaster ‘Bertha’. She is gloriously manual and certainly not for the novice. We currently live in an age of digital and before then, analogue, but this is from the time when things were mechanical. No PCBs or digital readouts, you run her on intuition operating with six senses:

Sight - Watching the coffee develop through the sight glass in the door of the roaster, watching the temperature while checking the time for profiling consistency. Taking a roasted bean and cracking it open to check that the coffee is fully roasted to the core.

Sound - Listening to the coffee for as it becomes ready the coffee first cracks as the moisture leaves the beans under pressure from within. I have been called the coffee whisperer because of the attention I give listening to the coffee as it comes on song.

Smell - As the beans go through the various stages of the roasting process subtle changes occur in the fragrances that emanate from Bertha. The ability to recognise these changes helps me to pinpoint exactly where we are in the process.

Touch – As I use the machine operating the valves and levers at critical points throughout the roasting process.

Taste – Obviously sampling the various coffees after roasting but also one can take a bean and chew it to gain an appreciation for the coffee just roasted. You receive quite a burst of flavour from a single bean although, repeating this a few times, the grains of coffee between your teeth isn’t the most attractive look!

Sixth sense is the hard part. Almost feeling the coffee and knowing when it is just right and sensing when it should be ready and dropping the beans into the cooling chamber at just the right moment. Reacting to the weather be it cold, hot, humid, dry or damp all these factors come into play requiring fine tuning adjustment, getting the coffee fettled just so.