What are the benefits of small batch roasted coffee?

Are you a new business looking for the best coffee?

You are. Great. We’d tell anyone who wants to listen that small-batch coffee is the best coffee. Why? Let me tell you.

If you buy coffee in bulk from a large wholesaler or cash and carry, you can pretty much guarantee that it won’t be fresh and although it may seem cheap, you’re not getting value for money at all. Small batch coffee roasters do what it says on the tin and only roast in small batches at a time; meaning the coffee supplied by them is always freshly roasted.

Large, cheap coffee producers only show the best before date on the bag,  so there is no way of telling when it was roasted, and therefore how fresh it is. At Two Chimps Coffee, our ethos is fresh is best, and so, we do things differently. To start, we have a roasted on date instead. Read on to find out why and what the benefits are of small-batch roasted coffee.

Fresh Coffee

We know that coffee is at its best when it’s fresh and it’s at this point a few days after roasting. Like most food products, once it’s been cooked, it will only stay fresh for a certain amount of time before it goes off and is no good for eating anymore. Unlike other foodstuffs, however, coffee will not necessarily do you any harm if you consume old, stale coffee, it just won’t taste very nice is all. Do your taste buds a favour and find some super fresh coffee instead; they will love you for it.

We ethically source our green beans via a short trade route from small farms all around the world. Our coffee is 100% speciality arabica coffee, and therefore farmers get paid between 30-150% more for their coffee because of the high quality. This price far surpasses the minimum guaranteed by organisations such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance, which are there to support farmers of commodity grade coffee.

Sourcing in this way means more money paid for the coffee goes directly back into the farm. This supports the farm by creating better pay and working conditions for the workers and better living conditions for the farmers and their families.

Hand roasted coffee

Once we’ve sourced our beans, we store them in their green form at our roastery, ready for roasting. As mentioned, we roast in small batches, and we do so multiple times each week. This assures that when our customers receive their coffee delivery, it is freshly roasted.

We roast a maximum of 12kg of beans at a time, and, sometimes we roast in batches of 8kg, which means that we can roast smaller amounts more frequently; thus meaning our coffee is always fresh. Some roasters will roast 60kg or more of coffee at a time and store it ready roasted. If it then takes them 3 months to shift, by the time it gets to the customer, it could already potentially be 3 to 4 months old!

We roast everything by hand, and nothing is automated. We have a computer that tracks the roast for us and creates a graph to show us how the roast is progressing, but we always follow our unique recipes that we have created for our coffees, and any adjustments are made by using our sensory skills and by hand. Using our knowledge and experience, we’re able to tell just by sight, sound and smell, whereabouts in the roast we’re at, what to expect next and whether anything needs tweaking.

Changes in weather

It’s important to know when to adjust because variables can change all the time; for example, the weather plays a difference in the roast would you believe!

Roasting beans is done by conduction heat, where energy is transferred as heat to the beans, which in turn, removes the moisture. As the beans roast, the outer layer of chaff is removed from the bean and we need to introduce air to the roast which helps to remove this chaff and any smoke developing from the coffee drum.

Heating by air is known as convection heating—the heat transfers around the roast. Depending on the weather depends on how warm the incoming air is. For instance, if it is sunny outside and 30 degrees (let’s face it, not very often) then the incoming air will be much warmer than if it was a wintery 3 degrees. This is why it’s imperative to be in control of your roast. By roasting by hand in small batches, we can ensure an even, consistent roast every time.

Speciality Coffee

We source speciality coffee not only because it’s the highest grade but also for the unique flavours that are found within speciality coffee. To give you an idea, Brazilian coffees usually grow at a lower altitude and therefore often have a chocolatey and nutty taste. In contrast, Ethiopian coffees are grown at higher altitude, giving them distinctive floral & acidic notes.

For each coffee that we roast, we’ve created specific roasting recipes to enable us to bring out those delicate flavours. Every single-origin coffee is different and therefore will require a different way to roast. For example, our Ethiopian coffees are grown higher and therefore are denser. They will need more heat to break through the tight cell structure, resulting in a higher start temperature. To find this information and more, we always measure moisture and density levels before a roast. There isn’t just a ‘one roast fits all’ policy here, oh no.

By roasting in small batches, we’re able to control the whole roast every time. Which, therefore only increases our experience for the next time. This is unlike large commercial roasteries who roast large batches of lower-grade beans on the same automatic programmes.

Lower-grade coffee is often over-roasted too, giving it a burnt taste which covers up any impurities in the beans. With small-batch coffee from Two Chimps however, we never over roast our beans. Instead, each coffee is full of unique, individual flavours.

Read for awesome coffee? No problem. You are just one click away from the most awesomest small-batch roasted coffee. Head over to our shop now.

Oh, did I mention that everything comes with FREE 1^st class delivery? No? Well, I have now. Enjoy.

Dive in