ABOVE: Aviary’s roastery in Cleveland, Ohio in March 2026. Here, coffee flows from right to left, requiring only one operator for the entire production line as coffee moves from a net-weigher dispensing 3000.0g of green coffee to the P3000; from the P3000 to an Arlyn scale; from the scale to the RealTech Q32 color sorter; […]
A brief personal note: After a few restless months, my roasting project, Aviary, is live. I funded Aviary using a crowdfunding mechanism and without any outside investment (save an equipment loan through the Small Business Administration) with the intention of keeping the company unencumbered from financial influence or expectations of a return on investment. I […]
In the months since I published my post on sample roasters, I’ve heard from countless Roest users who shared my experience—and perhaps a few frustrations—and who hoped I’d be willing to shed a little more insight into best practices for getting optimal results from the roaster. Every coffee that comes through my lab is roasted […]
I hope that by providing a nuanced look at each of the four roasters on my bench—an Ikawa Pro, Kaffelogic Nano 7, Arc S, and Roest L100 Plus—you’ll have sufficient context and insight about each of these roasters and how I approach them to guide your own selection toward a machine that best suits your needs.
Since leaving Phoenix in August (after leading the company through a rebranding, a renaissance in quality, the pandemic, a retail expansion and restructuring into a worker-owned cooperative), I’ve thought a lot about what I might do differently if I were ever to start my own roastery. Over my 13 years as a roaster, coffee buyer […]
Driving the train doesn’t set its course. The real job is laying the track. Ed Catmull I don’t tend to write a lot about roasting here, partially because I think my colleagues (Anne Cooper, Scott Rao, Rob Hoos, Candice Madison, Joe Marocco, Matt Perger—to name a few) have said more interesting and helpful things than […]
I’ve described the events of the past few weeks this way: I’m standing in the middle of a frozen lake and notice a crack forming in the ice. How do we get to shore?