Our Story
The Coffee Roaster was established in 1987 by Richard Healy. His goal was to provide customers with the finest, freshest and most meticulously roasted coffee found in the world, as he had experienced in Central America. Our passion for the art of coffee roasting is centered in our shop. Our coffee roaster is the center piece of the shop. Customers can sense the soul of the coffee they drink by stepping into our shop. Although we are a small shop, we always welcome our new customers to our community. We hope you'll find the time to sit and relax, enjoying a great cup of coffee or tea and interesting conversation.
We start
by purchasing the finest green coffee beans from around the world. The beans are purchased from the most respected coffee brokers in the country. As well as many purchased directly from their distinguished farms. This is an important fact, because like a fine wine, the country or region that a coffee comes from does not by itself define its quality.
The soil, the sun, and the surrounding habitat determine the flavors of the fruit that is grown in the region. Like any good fruit the growing conditions are the primary influence affecting the taste of the coffee. Each variety has been selected to bring our customers the best the coffee world has to offer. Most of what we sell is organic, certified or not. Because when the habitat supports healthy plants, there is little or no need to use the pesticides and fertilizers common to large commercial crops. The taste of the coffee will demonstrate what we mean.
The Roasting
CoffeeResearch.org, defines coffee roasting as "a chemical process by which aromatics, acids, and other flavor components are either created, balanced, or altered in a way that should augment the flavor, acidity, aftertaste and body of the coffee as desired by the roaster." What that means is this: roasting coffee brings out its distinctive character. Every pound of coffee has the potential to express itself in a way that will reflect the unique flavors that the environment it was grown in provided.
Every morning we roast our green coffee beans on our original Diedrich 12 kilo coffee roaster. We have a personal interaction with the coffee we roast. Unlike larger coffee roasting companies, The Coffee Roaster uses a 100% manual roasting process on small batches of beans. Our sense of smell, sight and sound allow us to achieve the perfect roast on each bean in the batch. We could roast larger amounts, but by roasting small batches we can provide our customers with the freshest beans possible.