COFFEE
&
CAKE
Best roast in town? Small Batch Coffee Roasters has had a successful growth and strives to work and improve the quality of their coffee. Pete Hayward sat down with managing director Alan Tomlins to discuss the fascinating background process of raw berry to perfect espresso.
The Cappuccino Kid
When did Small Batch open for business? We started the company as a wholesale roasting business in 2007 and opened our first café in Goldstone Villas, Hove in 2009. Ok, you are now running nine Small Batch sites. The quality of the coffee is second to none. Can you enlighten us on the coffee source buying process? Our sourcing works slightly differently in each country we work in but essentially we travel 3-4 times a year to Latin America and East Africa to meet with coffee producers, visit their farms and do extensive tastings and quality research. When we find a coffee, we want to buy we then agree a price with the producer then use an importer to finance the purchase of the coffee for us and handle the logistics of the import itself. Everybody’s costs and profit margins are fully transparent and we believe this is the best way for us to ensure the producer is paid a price that is profitable and sustainable for them, reflects the coffee's value and ensure the relationship is sustainable and beneficial for all parties involved. We try as much as possible to build these relationships with all of our coffees and then work with the same farms and producers year on year. We have been working with several farms more than five years now and these long-term relationships are hugely beneficial to everyone. The prices we pay the producers are far higher than both the commodity market and FairTrade minimum prices. In your experience, which are the best Coffee producing countries? We work primarily in Central America, South America and East Africa. These are the regions where the best Arabica coffees are grown. Coffee requires a moderate, consistent climate, altitude above 1500m and mineral-rich soil. Specifically, in my mind, the very best coffees in the world come from Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia, Rwanda and Guatemala. Are there differences in the way farmers from different regions grow and process beans? There is a huge amount of difference in the way coffee is grown and processed across the coffee growing world. Like wine, there are
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hundreds of different varieties of Arabica coffee which all have a different taste profile. Again like wine, there are certain regional flavours or terroir that represent distinct regions. Ethiopian coffees, for example, are very easy to spot as Ethiopian. Finally, the way we process coffee, ie turn from a freshly harvested coffee cherry to a dry coffee bean ready to export has the most distinct effect on the final cup. There are a million variations on how to do this but there are three main styles of processing: Washed, Natural and Honey. The difference between these three styles is as defined as the difference between White, Red and Rose wine. Do you perform regular tasting before wholesale bean purchase? What does this entail? We taste coffee every single day. Structured coffee tasting is called cupping and we cup coffees for a variety of reasons. On visits to producing countries, we will cup several hundred coffees a day to assess the quality and find the farms we want to work with. Back at the roastery in Portslade, we might cup coffee to see if we are roasting as well as we can, or to see if the green coffee is getting old. You are currently running a 12-kilo roaster. With the business growing do you have plans to expand on the machinery? We have big plans to expand our roastery and wholesale business. We have recently moved our roastery from the original café in Hove to our news site in Portslade. As well as our existing 12kg roaster we are currently renovating a vintage 1950’s German roaster that will massively increase our roasting capacity and allow us to buy a lot more coffee from the producers we have sent the last ten years relationships with. It’s very exciting! Could you tell us the history of the newly acquired huge, old roaster? There are a few reasons we wanted to take on the headache of buying and restoring a classic roaster rather than simply buying an off the shelf new one. Firstly we’re pretty handson and like to do things ourselves but also
ABSOLUTE
heat retention is really important in roasting coffee and the quality of the metal is key to good heat retention. The drum and casing of a coffee roaster are made of Iron and they quite literally don’t make iron like they used to. Roasters manufactured before the 1960’s have a different composite Iron in them and have much better heat retention than newer drums. It all comes to chemistry and results in a better, more even roast for our coffees. Do you use a specific designer for the shop interiors? The Worthing branch has an interesting and minimal feel. All our shops are designed by our friends at Chalk Architecture. They’ve done a great job of creating a unique look and feel at each site that still clearly retains the Small Batch vibe and are all clearly related. The wall artwork in the Portslade roastery is quite fetching, can you give me a little background on the art? With the café being located in the roastery which is quite a big warehouse, we wanted to add some colour and life to separate the café from the roasting area and add some light to the building. We were lucky enough to get our friends Art + Believe to do a bespoke mural for the wall channelling the street art and geography of the coffee lands in Central and South America. It feels like a natural connection as so much of our coffee starts life in those areas and Art + Believe have done a ton of street art projects in South America previously. What are your expansion plans in general and the ethos of growth? We want to keep growing the business through both opening new cafes and expanding the wholesale roasting operation. The two things go hand in hand, and the more coffee we can buy, the more positive impact we can have at the origin and the more sustainable, beneficial relationships we can build with producers. Small Batch Coffee Roasters, Wellington House, Camden Street, Portslade BN41 1DU www.facebook.com/ smallbatchcoffeewellington