A day in the life of a coffee roaster

A day in the life of a coffee roaster... We receive a lot of questions about this subject, how nice to see! I understand that it is interesting to take a look behind the scenes. But there really is no such thing as a typical day in the life of a coffee roaster! Every day is different for us, depending on the planning and orders that come in. This makes it exciting, so to speak.

However, there are certain aspects that regularly occur in a day in the life of a coffee roaster, and I would like to share them with you in this blog! The busyness of the fire day also plays a role in this, so Mondays are often busier than other days. On Mondays I focus almost entirely on roasting coffee, while the rest of the team deals with tasks such as packing, cleaning, inventory management and customer service. On quieter days I combine all the tasks myself. Welcome to my world as a coffee roaster, I'm curious what the day will bring me...

“This is a day in the life of a coffee roaster.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zwarte Roes Specialty Coffee (@zwarteroes)

Rise and Shine

Good morning! I'm Marvin, the co-founder and head roaster at Zwarte Roes Specialty Coffee. Today I take you on a day in the life of a coffee roaster. My day starts early, both to start efficiently and to take care of my two small children. Nothing gives me more satisfaction than thinking about my first cup of coffee of the day...

But let's get to the point. My day usually starts with exercise, followed by our coffee ritual at home. We almost always make a pour in the morning, often even several. This is not only delicious, but also very important. It allows me to test my quality control and brewing recommendations in practice. Every day as a coffee roaster starts early and is all about testing different methods!

We like to use the V60 , the Origami dripper or the Aeropress for our pour over, and enjoy grinding with our Fellow Ode Gen 2 grinder or 1Zpresso JX-Pro . We select different coffees from our range of light roasts so that we can constantly evaluate the quality.

This is a typical day in the life of a coffee roaster at Zwarte Roes Specialty Coffee.

Turning on the Roaster

After our daily coffee-making ritual at home, surrounded by our two little ones, the hasty race to get to school on time begins. As soon as I get to the office, the first thing I do is turn on the espresso machine and the coffee roaster. The roaster always takes some time to heat up, so this is my first task upon arrival.

In the meantime, I quickly check my emails for urgent matters, while Eline often deals with customer service. And surprise, surprise, then I quickly make a double espresso for quality control and enjoy the delicious flavors in my mouth. Well, what can I say, the life of a coffee roaster is tough!

Experience a typical day in the life of a coffee roaster and discover the passion behind this craft!

Create roast planning

Then I quickly move on to the roast planning. I look at how much roasted coffee of each type is left from the previous roast day and see what has been ordered using an order list. Based on a system I use for coffee roasting, I can easily see how quickly a particular coffee goes through our machines.

So in other words: if I still have 4 kilos of a filter special lying around, I can easily determine whether we will probably survive with that amount until the next roast day, or not. Because what we think is most important is that coffee is as fresh as possible! This gives your cup of coffee so many more delicious flavors than coffee that has been growing stale for weeks or months... So it is very important that I make this roast planning very carefully.

Weighing and preparing the batches

Once I have created and mapped out the roast planning based on the different systems, my day in the life as a coffee roaster continues! The green coffee must now be prepared. I often ask my logistics employee this, so that I can continue with my email in the meantime. If I'm alone that day, I'll have to take care of it myself...

All coffees are weighed in batches and prepared in buckets. This way I can easily continue 'blasting' one after the other while roasting the coffees.

So far there isn't much that's exciting about this day in the life of a coffee roaster, but after this we'll really get started.

Let the roast begin!

When the roaster starts to 'beep', I know my roaster has heated up. It's time to get the party started and get the first batch ready. In the software I use, I select the correct roasting profile. Roasting coffee is an extremely precise and precise job. I don't want to just "imitate approximately this profile", no, I want to create exactly the same brand profile or with a small, planned improvement that I came up with during my quality control.

Between batches I let the coffee roaster return to the correct starting temperature. I then let the just-roasted coffee cool down as quickly as possible in the cooling tray to stop the developing process of the coffee beans. Each batch then goes through the destoner to filter out any twigs, stones or screws based on weight. Fortunately, this almost never happens, but occasionally a stone is filtered out. After the destoner, the beans fall back into the bucket, with the correct lid on it, so that they can be packaged.

This is a day in the life of a coffee roaster, where precision and attention to quality are central.

Lunch break

I prefer not to take a break while roasting, so I generally don't eat lunch until I'm completely done roasting. Sometimes this is only after 3 p.m. if it is a busy day.

The reason I prefer not to do it is that I don't want to leave the hot burner alone. And cooling down and then turning it back on takes a very long time, longer than my lunch break :-).

In this day in the life of a coffee roaster you can see that I don't have lunch in between, but I often try to plan it in such a way that my roasting days do not last entire working days. Also because it is quite intensive to focus all the time on the precise aspects of the profession...

Packing orders

My busy daily life as a coffee roaster involves a daily routine where our logistics team member packs the orders. This process often starts in the morning while I am busy roasting the coffee myself. We start by preparing everything and see which orders can already be packed and which ones we have to wait for the coffees to be roasted that day.

On days when I am alone, I have to start packing immediately after lunch so that all packages can be picked up by the delivery service at 3 p.m. This deadline is of great importance to us. Although we cannot guarantee that your package will arrive the next day, we will ensure that all orders placed before 3pm are shipped the same working day. This usually makes it possible to receive your package the next working day.

This is a typical day in the life of a coffee roaster, where we always strive to satisfy our customers with fast and efficient shipping of their orders.

To clean

Every day we ensure that our roasting facility and packing area are completely in order. We close everything neatly, remove dust and wipe everywhere. Everything that can be put back in the closet is cleaned up and organized. This way we can work neatly and hygienically and start the next working day optimally.

Fortunately, we do not have to thoroughly clean the coffee roaster every day. This is an important task that we carry out very carefully a few times a year. This is critical for the taste of the coffee, preserving the machine and minimizing fire hazards. Cleaning really is an essential part of a day in the life of a coffee roaster!

Quality control and cupping

If I still have time left and my personal caffeine tax has not yet been reached, I make room for quality control through cupping . It also regularly happens that I have to cup coffees that we have received from suppliers to assess whether we want to include these coffees in our range and therefore purchase them. Cupping is a fascinating process to assess the quality of coffees.

For the quality control of existing coffees, I can easily evaluate different roast profiles side by side to see whether the desired effect is achieved with a particular intervention. A day in the life of a coffee roaster includes countless coffee tastings, as you can see!

Stock evaluation

A day in the life of a coffee roaster: why managing inventory is essential

It is crucial to have a good view of the stock of all our products. We always want to avoid suddenly running out of stock. Although this may happen occasionally, we naturally strive to prevent this. Fortunately, we use systems that allow us to have a clear overview of our green coffee stock. However, it may happen that we are not always able to order more immediately when 'sold out', so sometimes it really does run out.

As coffee roasters, we know that managing inventory is an essential part of our daily work. By ensuring that we have sufficient stock, we can always provide our customers with the most delicious coffee. That's why we take the time to manage our stock well and ensure that we always have enough green coffee in stock.

When we provide insight into the stock of green coffee in our systems, we have a clear overview of what we have in stock and how much. This allows us to act proactively and reorder if necessary. Although we cannot always reorder immediately when stock runs out, we do our utmost to ensure that this happens as little as possible.

As a coffee roaster, we understand that good inventory management is one of the keys to our success. By ensuring that we always have sufficient green coffee in stock, we can continue to provide our customers with the best quality and taste. So while we may occasionally run out of stock, we work hard to keep this to a minimum and keep our customers happy.

Customer service

As mentioned earlier, Eline is often responsible for the majority of our customer service, because she is simply very skilled at it. She responds quickly, has numerous solutions ready and has almost everything under control! But today Eline happens to be ill and I take over her duties. Yes, a day in the life of a coffee roaster involves so much more than just roasting coffee. Today we cover all aspects including customer service.

Customer service is our top priority and we strive to almost always respond within a few hours. Even at the end of the day, we always check whether there are any outstanding customer service questions. With us you don't have to wait for days before you get an answer to your question, we don't have long queues.

Conclusion

A day in the life of a coffee roaster is certainly not limited to roasting coffee. It involves a multitude of tasks focused on quality assessment, inventory management and customer service. I, as a coffee roaster, spend significant time evaluating and comparing different roast profiles to ensure quality. An equally crucial task is maintaining visibility of inventories, as a lack of this can lead to operational disruptions.

Customer service is another essential aspect of the role, with an emphasis on prompt and effective communication. Although these tasks are normally taken on by the real specialist, I may have to take over myself in case of unexpected circumstances, such as illness. This confirms that the work of a coffee roaster is extremely diverse and far from monotonous.