What I learned at the first Scottish Roasters’ Forum

Earlier this September I made the trip down to Aberfeldy for the first Scottish Roasters’ Forum, hosted by Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters in collaboration with the Cuppers’ Union.

Running What’s Bean Grinding on my own, tucked away up here in Strathnaver, can sometimes feel a little isolated. So getting a room full of independent Scottish coffee roasters together to talk, taste coffee, swap ideas and discuss some of the challenges facing the industry was always going to be worth the journey.

The theme of the day was resilience.

That covered a lot of ground. We talked about the increasing volatility of green coffee prices, sourcing decisions, the pressures facing producers and importers, building resilient roasting businesses and even the less glamorous but rather important subject of keeping roasting equipment working properly.

There was coffee too. (Obviously)

Photo: Michael Hartley (@roast.rescue.repeat)

Coffee beyond the familiar

One of the most interesting parts of the day for me was a session looking beyond the coffee species we normally drink.

There are 133 catalogued species of coffee, yet 99.9% of global production comes from just two: Arabica and Canephora, better known as Robusta.

With climate change putting increasing pressure on the places where coffee is traditionally grown, there is growing interest in what some of those other species might offer, both in terms of resilience and, importantly, what they actually taste like.

Photo: Michael Hartley (@roast.rescue.repeat)

And we got to taste some.

Photo: Michael Hartley (@roast.rescue.repeat)

There was Liberica, Excelsa and Racemosa, alongside coffees that were much more familiar.

The South Sudanese honey-process Excelsa was probably the alternative species that stood out most to me. It was a lovely cup, and genuinely interesting rather than simply interesting because it was unusual.

But my favourite coffee of the whole day was actually a Yemeni coffee.

By some distance.

I also got to taste coffee from Hawaii, which isn't something that comes across my cupping table very often.

That is probably the part of the day that most neatly connects back to why What’s Bean Grinding exists in the first place.

I love discovering something I haven't tasted before.

Different country. Different process. Different variety. Sometimes, as in this case, an entirely different species.

Not every unusual coffee is automatically a great coffee, and novelty isn't the same thing as quality. But being able to taste something genuinely different and understand a little more about why it is different is exactly what keeps coffee interesting for me.

Taste is exploring.

Being small can actually be the point

It is very easy, running a tiny roastery, to look at bigger businesses and think about all the things they can do that you can’t.

They can buy much larger lots. They can hold more stock. They have teams of people doing things that, here, are generally done by me.

But the forum made me think a little differently about that.

One of the sourcing sessions also put a bit more structure around something I think I have been doing fairly instinctively.

Choosing a coffee isn’t just about its score or its price. Does it fill a gap in the range? Is it a country, region or process I haven’t offered recently? Does it bring a flavour profile that is genuinely different? Is it familiar, or something new?

For a very small roastery, those questions can matter more than whether I can buy enough of a coffee to keep it on the website for the next six months.

I don’t particularly want six months of the same thing.

One of the reasons What’s Bean Grinding exists is because I was a terrible loyal customer myself.

I wanted to keep trying different coffees. Different countries, varietals, processes and flavour profiles. I would buy from one roaster, then another, then another because I wanted to know what else was out there.

Larger roasters often need consistency and volume. A coffee might remain part of the range for months because that is exactly what their customers and wholesale accounts need.

I don’t have to work like that.

I can buy a small lot, roast it, enjoy it, share it with you and then move on to something completely different.

That constant exploration isn’t a limitation of being small.

It might actually be the reason for being small.

It also reinforced why the Coffee Explorer subscription feels so central to what I’m trying to do. The aim isn’t to send the same dependable coffee every month. It is to keep exploring.

Taste should be an adventure.

Sustainability has to mean something

There was also a lot of conversation around resilience and sustainability throughout the day, and it made me think more carefully about how I explain what I do here.

The roaster at What’s Bean Grinding is electric. The electricity I buy is renewable and, when the Highland weather cooperates, the solar panels here in Strathnaver are generating electricity directly for the roastery.

With the obvious exception of getting coffee and parcels from one place to another, I am trying to remove the need to burn fossil fuels from the roasting side of the business altogether.

I’ve spoken about the individual pieces of that before, but perhaps not enough about why they matter collectively.

Being sustainable shouldn't just be another line underneath a product description. It should influence how the business actually operates.

I need to tell the story better

Possibly the most useful realisation of the day had very little to do with roasting coffee.

Talking to other roasters made me realise that I probably don’t explain What’s Bean Grinding particularly well.

Someone landing on a product page might simply see a 150g bag of speciality coffee and its price.

They don’t necessarily see the tiny batches. The constantly changing coffees. The hours spent developing roast profiles. The electric roasting. The solar generation. The compostable packaging. Or the slightly obsessive desire to find something I haven’t tasted before.

Those things are not extras around the edges of the business.

They are the business.

So you might notice me talking a little more about them.

Not because I particularly enjoy talking about myself, but because if you choose to buy coffee from a tiny independent roastery in the far north of Scotland, I think you deserve to know what you are supporting.

Scottish coffee is in a good place

Perhaps the nicest part of the forum was simply meeting other people doing the same strange job in very different ways.

There were businesses of different sizes, different approaches to roasting and different ideas about where speciality coffee in Scotland goes next.

Nobody has to do it exactly the same way.

That is probably the point.

A huge thank you to Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters and the Cuppers’ Union for putting the first Scottish Roasters’ Forum together and creating the space for those conversations.

I came home with plenty to think about, a few new connections and, inevitably, even more coffee I want to explore.

Which is probably exactly as it should be.

Variety is the spice of life. And life is too short for shit coffee.

I was rubbish taking photos so thanks to @roast.rescue.repeat Photo: Michael Hartley for taking some great shots!