- I've been in coffee for
five years and three days.
- Oh wow, very accurate.
- Yeah.
- Cool, so did you enjoy it?
- Yeah, I did chemistry at the start, so,
I was just about to graduate,
doing applied chemistry at UTS.
- Cool.
- And I was managing a bakery.
And they had a coffee
machine, obviously, they
sold a little bit of coffee,
and the rep asked me
some chemistry questions,
and I knew more than the rep.
So then, I started a company
in roasting for three years.
And then I left and had a break,
and now I've started my
company about a year ago.
- Yeah, cool
- Yeah.
I set out just to do origins
and to buy pretty much the
best grains that I could
and to work legitimately
direct with producers
instead of sort of just pretending.
- Sure.
- Like a lot of people.
- Yeah.
- So the stuff I get, if
I were with a producer,
I'll get a lot of their stuff.
- Yeah.
- So I'll get sort of their
naturals, their washed,
a few varietals, few screen sizes.
- Yeah.
- And yeah, I pay their bank account.
And then, I pay people
to sort of bring it in.
- Yeah.
- Usually the bigger guys.
I'll buy something and
try and ship it with.
- Cool.
- We'd share it in a
container with them, and--
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Cool, so what is the
most attractive thing
to you for roasting?
- I get bored if I do the
same coffee too many times.
- Yeah, okay.
- So, to me, the attractive thing
is sort of profiling the coffee.
- For each coffee I get,
I only do one roast of it.
- As in, one roast level.
So I don't do espresso on filter.
- So some of them are good for espresso,
some are good for naturals,
it's finding that out.
Once I've dialed in a coffee,
roasting-wise, it's just boring.
- And I try and sell out
as quick as I can of it.
- I get you.
- Because I'm bored and I
wanna go to the next one,
which is good.
- Yeah, lots of people
are telling me, profiling
the roasting curves
would be the most interesting part.
- Yeah.
- And if you're just a
mechanical, just like yeah,
the PSM work is actually, is quite boring.
So, have you met the most
difficult thing so far?
And have you ever come
and across anything?
- 'Cause I know the
producers, you know, 90% of,
unless I run out of coffee,
I buy stuff straight from producers.
- So I don't really like
doing the whole points system.
I just sort of cup for
screen size and defects.
- Okay, right.
- So some of my coffee costs $30,
some of it costs seven grand.
- Okay.
- Which is, I just pay what they ask.
- Okay, okay, sure, got you.
- Yeah.
- So how--
- So I've bought some
difficult coffees, yeah.
And though that happens--
- That's--
- Usually naturals are the difficult ones.
- 'Cause washed, when you process washed,
you've got extra sorting,
you've got extra,
like, with the flotation
tanks and stuff that
sort of tends to sort of homogenize it,
which makes it easy to roast.
With naturals, you've got a lot,
there are a whole bunch
of different fermentation.
So it's really unstandardized,
and if that happens,
generally, then it's roasted
dark or called milk origin.
- Yeah, yeah, right.
- So I buy it anyway.
- Okay.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Which is cool.
- I think it's more like
a corrector of roasters.
Like, I think in roasters,
or especially coffee professionals
working in this industry
should have very innovative, independent,
a kind of engagement,
to try different things
and challenge them.
Sometimes it can be
risky, but you never know.
- Yeah.
- Probably give you
some really good result,
that you would never expected.
- Yeah.
- So how will you describe
your roasting style?
- I go as light and as quick as I can,
that the beans let me.
So really good beans, I'd say,
you have really well-processed Kenyans,
you can roast that in six
minutes, really light.
- From the beginning to the end.
- Yes.
- Six minutes sharp.
- Wow, that's really light.
- Yeah, and light, and
because they're all the same.
If you did that for something like a,
let's say, a natural Rwandan,
oh, it's not a good example,
like a natural Sumatran, you're
gonna get a lot of variation
in how they take heat, so
you're gonna get burnt ones,
and you also, like, over-developments,
you're also gonna get
really undeveloped ones.
- Yeah.
- So there's a lot of
complexity, as they call it.
- Yeah, right.
- So yeah.
- Interesting.
So, from your perspective,
do you thinking Sydney coffee
and Melbourne coffee has some differences,
or are they pretty similar?
- Yeah, there's a massive,
so Sydney doesn't--
- Yeah.
- So Sydney doesn't,
Sydneys, I find Sydneys more,
and this is what I've been
told by a lot of people,
more, the roasters are
friendlier to each other.
- What does that mean?
- Like, I have dinner
with the other roasters.
- Okay, (laughs) right, fair enough.
- And, I mean, you've got other roasters
currently using my equipment
that I've got too much of.
Like there's a color reader
that's down the road.
- Yeah.
- At another roastery because it's--
- Yeah.
- We're still in a very small niche.
- Yeah.
- That we're all very friendly,
and with, big enough of a market.
- Yeah.
- In Melbourne, there's not.
- Yeah.
- They also don't like
omni roasting, they prefer
darker for espresso,
and lighter for filter.
- Right, cool.
- So--
- It's very opposite.
- So how do you look on
the coffee supply chain
from the origins?
Do you think the price of the coffee,
and especially grade,
need to be transparent?
- Yeah, it does, I think there's a lot of,
I mean, if you look at,
if you talk to producers,
the perception in Australia
with who's ethical
and who's not is different.
- Yeah.
- You have a lot of people
who have really exorbitant
export margins, and that, they have,
let's say, four grades of quality,
and they're all very different prices,
but the producer's earning
maybe 10% difference.
- Exactly.
- Premium.
- Yeah, right.
- Yeah, which, about 87-point plus coffee,
they're only earning 50 cents above.
If you look at the sort of successful,
I think, with any startup
that you're bootstrapping,
if you look at the successful model,
if you try and copy them, by the time
you actually reach that,
you're out of date, you know?
'Cause it takes a few years, and, I think,
looking ahead to what roasters
are doing, and I think,
you got a lot of blockchain technology
going into this now, or
just technology in general,
that, what I'm doing, I
think, in three years' time,
I'm counting on, will be a lot bigger.
- What is your favorite roasting machine?
- Yeah, probably a P5.
- Big buy...
- Big buy? yeah, perhaps five kilos?
- Yeah, cool.
- They're fun.
I think it's more about
the probes and the setup.
Roasting machines aren't
really, there's a lot of them,
even with the same model,
that are very different.
You know, the same line,
when they get off the conveyor belt,
they're all modified, so--
- Yeah.
- You've got a lot of, say,
if you were to pick a brand,
and have two, same model, side by side,
they're very different to roast on.
- Okay, okay, cool, so,
do you still remember your
first batch of coffee?
How did it taste like?
- Yeah.
I think I did decaf first.
We used to train on decaf for mild, yeah.
- I think a less emotional
story than decaf,
the blend, then single,
like that way, yeah.
- Yeah, I actually like decaf,
'cause you can roast it well,
it's like, it's nice with
milk, obviously not black.
- But yeah, no, I remember
that, it was disgusting.
'Cause we didn't buy very good decaf.
- That's okay, everybody
start with that flavor.
- Yeah.
- And then really redoing deeper memories.
- When you get the greens,
what will you check first?
- Uniformity.
- Sorry, what?
- Uniformity.
- Uniformity, yeah.
- Moisture and density, to
an extent, but uniformity,
when you're sample roasting,
is the most important,
to be honest, and it's underlooked,
especially for my style,
'cause it's light.
- Yeah.
- If it's not uniform,
then you're gonna get the vegetal flavors.
It's like cooking a bunch
of steaks on the same pan,
if they're all different sizes,
you're gonna get
different cooks, you know?
If they're all the same
size, they cook evenly.
- Yeah.
During the roasting process, right?
- Yeah.
- Which stage will be
paid more attention to?
- Oh, just going into, and
just after first crack.
Really, what's known as the drying phase,
the start is just about
not screwing it up.
- Yeah.
- So just about putting too much heat in.
- Yeah.
- And if you go too slow,
then you're gonna lose acidity
at the back end, 'cause
you're not going fast enough.
- Right, right.
- There's a lot of different
schools, they'll say you need
25% development, you
need different things.
To be honest, I just go into
first crack all the time.
- Cool.
- Maybe like 10%.
- That's, most people does.
- Yeah, very Nordic.
But, to me, just before first
crack, the rate that I go in
is more important than actually
developing it later.
- Is Kenyan kind of, the
most, the lightest coffee
you've roasted, ever, so far?
- Yeah, I love Kenyans.
- Yeah.
- I bought 12 cases this year.
- I heard about it, some story about it.
- Oh yeah, you were there,
but you were there--
- Yeah, we were there,
me and Dan with the MTC,
- When I was in that auction.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And you bought a whole lot.
- The Sucafina.
- So I said, oh wow.
- Yeah, yeah.
- That's amazing.
- Kenyan and Ecuadorean
coffee are my favorites.
If it was up to me, I'd just have them.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But they're only,
they're actually quite
close in their season.
- Right.
- So I bought heaps so I can delay it.
I've got a natural, I've got,
the same producer, different--
- And they were gonna try it,
so I can't come wait for it,
so decided--
- Yeah, yeah, it's fun.
- Oh good, thank you for your time.
- Thanks, man, thank you.
