Specialty coffee and single-origin roasts
What does specialty coffee and single-origin roasts involve?
Yes — every coffee we serve is roasted out the back on a 15kg Probat drum roaster. There is one espresso blend on the main grinder, a decaf on the second, and two single origins rotating through filter each week. Retail bags carry a roast date, and we grind to order.
At a glance
- Roast days
- Tuesday and Thursday, 15kg Probat UG
- Batch size
- 9–11kg green, cupped the next morning
- Espresso recipe
- 20g in, 42g out, 27–30 seconds
- Filter on offer
- Two single origins weekly, V60 or batch brew
- Rest before sale
- Espresso from day seven, filter from day five
- Retail sizes
- 250g and 1kg, ground to order or whole bean
The roastery
The Probat UG15 sits behind a glass wall at the back of the shop and runs Tuesday and Thursday mornings before the lunch rush. Batches are 9 to 11kg, charged around 195C, with first crack usually landing between 8:45 and 9:30 depending on density and moisture. Development is logged as a ratio rather than a fixed time — roughly 20 to 22 per cent for the espresso blend, closer to 17 for the filter lots, which keeps the acidity intact.
Every batch is cupped the following morning on the same three-bowl table, against the last two roasts of the same coffee. If a batch is flat it goes into staff drinks and gets re-profiled, not onto the shelf.
Espresso
The house blend, Ember, is a pulped-natural Brazilian from Cerrado Mineiro with a washed Colombian from Huila — a bit of body and cocoa from the first, red apple and a clean finish from the second. It is dialled at 20g in, 42g out, 27 to 30 seconds, and it is built to hold up under a lot of milk because that is what most of Gertrude Street orders. Decaf is a Swiss Water Colombian and lives on its own grinder, not a shared hopper.
Filter
Two single origins are open at any time, one brighter and one sweeter, brewed as a V60 to order or as batch at 55g per litre. A washed Ethiopian from Guji has been the jasmine-and-bergamot end of the pair for most of this year; the other rotates through Kenyan SL28 lots, Rwandan bourbon and the occasional natural-process Colombian when one is genuinely clean rather than merely fruity.
Buying beans
Bags are 250g or 1kg, stamped with the roast date and the recipe we use in the shop. Espresso is sold from day seven, when the carbon dioxide has settled enough to stop the shot gushing; filter goes out from day five. We grind to order on an EK43 if you tell us the brew method, though whole bean keeps a week longer and we will say so before we grind it.
Specialty coffee and single-origin roasts — common questions
- What is in the house espresso blend?
Ember is a two-origin blend: a pulped-natural Brazilian from Cerrado Mineiro for body and cocoa, and a washed Colombian from Huila for red-apple acidity and a clean finish. The components change with the harvest, usually twice a year, and we cup the replacement against the outgoing lot before it goes on the grinder.
- How long will the beans stay fresh?
Espresso tastes best between one and four weeks off roast; filter opens up a little sooner and fades a little faster. Keep the bag sealed at room temperature, not in the fridge, and buy 250g at a time unless you are drinking more than a kilogram a month. The roast date is on every bag so you can judge for yourself.
- Do you run a coffee subscription?
Yes — fortnightly or monthly, 250g or 1kg, either fixed on the house blend or set to follow whichever single origin is open that week. It ships the afternoon of a roast day and you can pause it from the account link in any dispatch email, which matters more than it sounds if you travel.