Loanscape has moved to Marrickville, and with that move comes the opportunity to explore businesses in our new locale.

First on our list is right next door, a unique speciality coffee roaster, The Wood Roaster. I sat down with director, Kim Loupis to find out what makes them so different.

Established in 2012, The Wood Roaster supply coffee beans to cafes and restaurants all over Sydney.

The difference

As the name suggests, The Wood Roaster roast their beans with wood, and they are one of only a handful of companies in the world to do so. Wood roasting can be more complicated than the usual method of gas roasting, but avoids common problems inherent in the method, such as burns on the beans, an uneven roast, and inconsistences in flavours and blend. The Wood Roaster’s custom built, fully temperature-controlled air roaster eliminates these problems, using Australian Ironbark to soft roast their beans from the inside out, bringing out the natural flavour profiles of the bean, making for a cleaner and more full-bodied cup of coffee.

Sustainability

The Wood Roaster also has strong core values when it comes to sustainability. The process is more sustainable than other methods. The roaster itself is run mostly off solar energy. They source their wood from sustainable forests: for every tree that's cut down, three get planted.

“We try minimising our waste, we recycle all the cardboard, we have minimal waste in our general garbage. All our coffee grinds go to a worm farm. The husk from the beans go to another farm with the Hessian bags for composting.”

From farm to cup

The Wood Roaster source their beans from all around the world. They get beans direct from Ethiopia, Rwanda, Panama, Colombia, and Peru, as well as from suppliers in Sydney.

Kim Loupis explains the process.

“We go out, look for the characteristics we're looking for. Every coffee gets judged by a Q grader. Then they give their recommendations for what it tastes like: flavours, grading, cupping score, body taste, aftertaste; they’ll do a graph for instance. We request a sample; we'll cup it and if we like the characteristics, then we'll roast up a sample and taste it from the machine. Then, once we've got about five or six different flavours or different regions, we'll start to blend it together to find a happy medium: what we're trying to achieve. Some are nutty, some are fruity, very floral, some tobacco-ey.”

My thoughts

I have now tried both the Olivia blend and the Choc Berry blend. Olivia has a rich and complex palate, high in acidity and flavour, with notes of toffee, chocolate, blackcurrant and caramelised orange. I prepared it with an espresso machine and found it quite strong, so it’s best with milk. I tried Choc Berry as home with my AeroPress. A well-balanced blend, it had a medium level of acidity and notes of chocolate and berries. I found it equally delightful with milk as without, although it is recommended with milk.

The Wood Roaster is located at 9-11a Shepherd Street, Marrickville. They are open Monday to Friday 9am-4pm.

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