The story of our roastery starts in 2013. At that time, we had been improving home-made regular coffee and just tasted specialty coffee. It was an unexpected discovery of beauty that impressed us more and more until fall in love.
Just about that, the idea arose to try roasting our coffee of the same quality.
It was a rather naive decision of a few friends, who didn’t have any experience in coffee roasting at that time.
We invest all our own money, reconstructed an unused shed in an old village smithy, completed our first roasting training ‘’for beginners’’, bought a small electric roaster of Czech production, and finally got a few small batches of green coffee from a Czech supplier. It was the beginning of an adventurous journey that we set out on and had no idea where it would take us. It was April 2014 when we put the first bean of coffee into our roaster.
The first experiences with roasting were motivated by enthusiasm and a new desire to discover the new world of flavors a glimpse of which we just saw. Of course, now we realize, our grain at that time was rather below average and our roasting was more like baking, but we were excited. In the first few months, we spend a large part of our free time in the roastery, fulfill of the energy of new ideas. In the first year, we roasted about 300 kg and started selling it to our first clients. A year later our roasting gradually became a regular activity, a new passion but routine. The process required more and more timely care and energy. The first flush of enthusiasm disappears, our motivations went through dwindling and we had to find new resources and new approaches. It was becoming almost impossible to roast only after working hours. This was the moment when the common paths of the partners began to diverge, and only our head roaster, Peter, was systematically engaged in roasting. He was a graduated architect, devoted himself to this creative profession. But smoothly, the original profession became a hobby and a new passion magically transferred now to the profession. From now creation of functional and esthetic buildings has become a creative search for beautiful tastes of coffee as part of its amazing story.
The beauty of coffee is the main motivation of our roastery as well as a source of energy for the inevitable routine part of our work.
In 2016, we had opened our cafе in Prague – Smíchov, we had realized that we riching the limits of our initial technology at this time. It did not allow us to move forward and improve the quality of our product. That’s why we bought a new Garanti roaster, it was not only larger (15 kg), but also allowed us to roast faster and more accurately. We choose for it unused of Peter’s architect studio, where he keeps a furnace with the anvil of a village smithy for some creative reason. We were able to “fine-tune” this roaster and connect it to an external data monitoring system which allows us to record the roasting process and save it in separate profiles. It was significantly improved in our quality and even in the enjoyment of work. Our roastery has regularly been ranked among the best roasters in the Czech Republic since then. Which allowed us to present themselves at the Barista of the Year event.
Our work basis is a constant desire to improve roasting techniques and find the best roasting profiles that will discover and fully demonstrate the beauty of coffee. Two years later our second roaster looks a little bit outdated in our vision of the quality product. After deeper research, we chose the Loring machine as our next-generation technology. The new roaster required a new working place and we reconstructed a large outdoor shelter that was used as a blacksmith for horseshoe forging in second world wartime.
Loring is a brand backed by California engineers who have been able to combine the technologies of top industrial roasters with their improvements and integrate everything into the dimensions of small roasting machines. In the autumn of 2018, we connected our future with this brand. We have access to the most modern thing in the world of coffee roasting, since then. Working with this precision technology makes us happy again and again with its flexibility, accuracy, and consistency, but paradoxically also by revealing any of our inaccuracies and possibility not covering up any mistakes. Until this, we tested the edge of the limit for used technology. Loring is such a powerful tool that testing our edge of the limit. And that’s great news, it forces us to exceed our limits!
The coffee roastery is creative and fun work, but sometimes it routine and tiring. It requires concentrations, patience, and diligence. This is collective work for sure. It synergies the abilities of each of our team members as well as baristas of our cafe or other baristas. Moreover, it strongly connected with the business partners, and friends of our roastery. Our vision of ourselves is part of the beautiful story of selected coffee. It always begins with careful coffee beans selection by the family farms in the equatorial countries. We try to keep these small farmers a good reputation by not demolition the potential of their coffee with too long or aggressive roasting, but also by roasting too short. We are always looking for the optimal way of roasting, which is suitable for each specific coffee so that its taste is beautiful, balanced, retains its sweetness, and its taste potential stands out.
If you love our coffee, we will be pleased if you will see yourself as part of this beautiful, worldwide coffee story.