Not many people get to spend their day roasting coffee. So what does their typical day actually look like? Who are the people behind the roaster, and what mix of art, science and instinct transforms a small green seed into the rich, flavour-packed coffee in your cup?
6am: Fire up the roaster
At Fish River HQ we roast four days a week, Monday to Friday. Michael, our head roaster arrives around 6am to get the roaster started. Our 60kg Joper roaster takes around 40 minutes to warm up.
6am: Roaster start
Power on, gas on, flame on and air compressor on (the roaster uses compressed air to open and shut doors, valves and switches).
While the machine heats up, there’s time for the first coffee of the day, a review of the roasting schedule and checking of coffee markets.
6.40am: First batch loaded
All of our green coffee arrives in 60kg hessian bags, which means the morning starts with plenty of lifting, sliding and wrestling bags across the warehouse to the green coffee loader.
The beans are vacuumed into the funnel above the roaster, ready to drop once the drum reaches the right temperature.
6.45am: Roasting begins
Now it’s game on.
The green beans are dropped into the roaster at a carefully chosen temperature, usually between 203°C and 208°C, depending on the coffee.
The moment the beans hit the drum, our roast monitoring software begins tracking time and temperature, creating a live graph known as the roast profile. Each of our coffee origins has its own profile, helping us maintain great quality and consistency from batch to batch.
Roasting isn’t just about the final bean colour - the journey matters too. Small changes during roasting can dramatically affect flavour.
Throughout the roast, the roaster uses a trier to pull samples and check colour, aroma and development. One key milestone is “first crack”, when pressure inside the bean builds until it pops like popcorn. This is where the coffee truly starts to taste like coffee, as complex chemical reactions rapidly develop flavour.
From there, the roast becomes increasingly intense. Gas, airflow, development time (the time from first crack to the drop temperature) are constantly adjusted and monitored until the final drop temperature is reached.
Most batches finish between 222°C and 227°C before being dropped into the cooling tray after roughly 11-13 minutes.
Between batches
While the roaster cools back to charging temperature for the next batch, quality control begins.
We measure the colour of the roasted beans with a laser reader, then grind samples to check the internal colour as well. Every reading is logged against the roast profile to ensure consistency and so we can trace each batch for quality control.
Meanwhile, the next batch is already loaded overhead and ready to go.
7.05 am: Second Roast
Once the now cooling coffee roaster hits the right drop in temp for the next coffee the green coffee is dropped into the roasting drum, the timer starts on the logging software and the process begins again.
The second roast is in and although there is now some residual heat in the roasting system the second roast will not always track the same as the first even if it is the same coffee origin. The second roast needs extra attention particularly at the end of the roast to make sure it meets our roast goals.
Once it is cooled the second roast follows the first roast to be vacuumed up into the destoner (a big silo that sits next to and high above the roaster) and then is transferred to our large stainless steel blender (350kg capacity) waiting for our post roasting blending process to begin.
7.25 am: Finding the rhythm
By the third roast of the morning, the process settles into a rhythm: loading green coffee, monitoring the roast, emptying cooling trays, blending finished batches and preparing the next load.
When everything runs smoothly, roasting feels a bit like a dance - timing, movement and concentration all working together to keep hundreds of kilos of coffee flowing through the system.
10.30am: Break time
Roasting demands focus. Things can change quickly, and small mistakes can have big consequences for flavour.
After four hours, it’s time for a quick break and handover to another roaster. There’s usually a snack, another coffee and a brief reset before heading back in.
11am: Final batches
The dance resumes for the final roasts of the day, with coffee continuously moving from roaster to cooling tray to blender.
1pm: Shut down and clean up
Once roasting finishes, the roaster still takes about an hour to cool down.
Then comes the clean-up: emptying coffee chaff, this is the light fluffy outer skin of green beans that is the major byproduct of roasting, vacuuming stray coffee beans, checking batch samples are correctly labelled and tagged.
Then it is into moving coffee bags around for the next day and scheduling production.
And just like that, the day is done - ready to begin again tomorrow morning.
