The roastery setup in a slanted upstairs room, featuring a black ergonomic office chair in front of a desk with a curved monitor, speakers, and a computer setup. The background wall has vertical wood slats, and the room has a wood floor and a large window on the left, coffee plant on the desk and coffee roaster under the window, with a worktop and bags of green beans on it.

Small-batch coffee, roasted in the Scottish Highlands

What’s Bean Grinding is my small independent coffee roastery in Strathnaver, in the far north of the Scottish Highlands.

It is just me (Chris), selecting coffees I find interesting, working out how best to roast them, drinking far too much coffee in the process, and sending the results out to people who enjoy exploring coffee as much as I do.

I am not trying to roast coffee for everyone.

I roast the coffees I love to drink, coffees with character, sweetness and something interesting to discover. Sometimes that means a beautifully clean washed coffee, sometimes something fruity and fermented, and occasionally a very small lot that is just too exciting not to buy.

If I enjoy it enough to put it in a bag, I hope you will too.

Chris wearing a tan jacket and striped beanie sits at a rustic wooden picnic table outdoors by the river Borgie, holding a light blue mug. Trees, grass, and a blue sky are visible in the background.

From computing to coffee

My love of coffee developed over nearly two decades in education.

After 19 years of teaching, much of it leading Computing and Computer Science, coffee had become a fairly essential part of everyday life. Like plenty of teachers, there were certainly days powered by more caffeine than I would probably care to admit.

But drinking coffee and really understanding coffee turned out to be two very different things.

Chris and Dave at Danelaw Coffee in a roastery, one operating a coffee roasting machine Allio Bullet, while monitoring a laptop screen showing temperature and graph data.

Learning from Danelaw

On 1 April 2023, I spent a roasting day with David Jameson of Danelaw Coffee in Meltham, Yorkshire.

Dave was someone I specifically wanted to learn from. His experience stretches across the coffee industry, from green coffee buying, roasting and tasting to judging at world level, and I had a huge amount of respect for both his knowledge and the way he talked about coffee.

What struck me most was his passion.

He had a way of making the complexity of speciality coffee feel exciting rather than intimidating, and that day gave me my first real glimpse into just how much there was to understand about what happens between a green coffee bean and the cup.

Chris in a brown jacket stands in a Danelaw Coffee Roastery, holding a clear plastic box while operating a Allio Bullet Coffee Roaster on a table with a laptop and containers of coffee nearby.

The first roast

I roasted my first ever coffee on an Aillio Bullet, and something rather appropriately caught fire in me too. Figuratively, thankfully.

That day became the real starting point for What’s Bean Grinding.

I went away, researched obsessively and began learning as much as I could about roasting. Eventually, I decided that a Kaleido M2 Sniper Pro would be the right machine for me to begin developing my own coffees.

It has been a fantastic little roaster to learn on. Small enough that I can experiment, make changes and really understand what is happening during a roast, but capable of producing the coffees that now leave the roastery every week.

My time with Dave has been fundamental to the way my own passion for coffee developed. The curiosity, the willingness to keep learning, and the idea that speciality coffee should be interesting without becoming inaccessible are all things that have stayed with me.

A Kaleido Sniper M2 Pro Coffee Roaster coffee roaster photographed from the front, sitting on a wooden table in the roastery with a skylight in the background.

From first roast to my own roastery

As What’s Bean Grinding grows, though, the Kaleido is beginning to feel increasingly little.

If the business continues heading in the right direction, the next chapter will probably involve moving to a larger electric roaster, with something like an Aillio Bullet R2 Pro firmly on the wish list.

Whatever comes next, I want to keep roasting electrically.

With the solar panels here in Strathnaver generating part of the electricity used by the roastery, increasing production does not have to mean abandoning the approach I started with. The aim is to keep exploring better coffee while continuing to reduce the carbon footprint involved in roasting it.

What started with one roasting day in Yorkshire has turned into a small roastery in the far north of Scotland.

I am still learning, still experimenting, and still getting excited every time a new sack of green coffee turns up.

Coffee Roaster with coffee beans and a Colourimeter on a wooden surface used to analyse the colour of the coffee beans for consistency..

Coffee is meant to be explored

Coffee is an agricultural product, and no two coffees are quite the same.

Origin, variety, altitude, processing, roast profile, water, grinder and brewing method can all change what you taste in the cup. That is part of what makes coffee so interesting.

Rather than trying to make every coffee taste the same, I want each one to show off what makes it distinctive.

That philosophy is also behind my Coffee Explorer subscriptions, where subscribers get to experience a changing selection of coffees throughout the year, including first tastes of new arrivals and occasional limited lots.

White bowls with coffee beans at different roast levels on a wooden surface

My Roasting Promise

Before a coffee reaches your bag, I spend time getting to know it.

New coffees are test roasted, the roast data is studied, and most importantly, the coffee is brewed and tasted.

I adjust the profile until I am happy that the roast is bringing out what I enjoyed about the coffee in the first place.

Once I find that sweet spot, the profile is recorded so I can reproduce it as consistently as possible from roast to roast.

Small batches also mean I can keep a close eye on every roast rather than simply pressing a button and hoping for the best.

Coffee roaster with green coffee beans loaded ready to drop into the hot roaster.

Roasted fresh every Monday

Monday is roasting day.

Coffee is roasted in small batches each week, with orders then prepared for dispatch on Tuesday.

That means I do not need shelves full of coffee sitting around waiting to be ordered. Your coffee is roasted specifically as part of that week's production and then given the opportunity to rest and develop on its way to you.

Fresh coffee does not necessarily mean coffee that should be brewed immediately. Most of the coffees I roast become even better after a few days, or even a week or two if you can wait that long.

Good things come to those who wait, although I appreciate that staring at an unopened bag of coffee for 14 days requires considerable restraint.

A snow-covered stone cottage with dark chimneys and a white door, photographed in falling snow against an overcast sky. Highlighting the solar Panels.

Roasted with Scottish sunshine

The roastery is electric, and the electricity I buy is supplied through a 100% green electricity tariff.

But during the brighter months there is something even nicer happening.

The solar panels here in Strathnaver generate electricity directly from the Scottish sun, which can then be used to power the roaster.

So yes, when the weather cooperates, your coffee really can be 100% solar roasted in the Scottish Highlands.

Not bad for somewhere that is not exactly famous for tropical sunshine.

A close-up of a pour-over coffee setup with dark coffee grounds in a white paper filter inside a black cup, with hot water being poured from a black kettle.

Life is too short for sh*t coffee

Speciality coffee can occasionally make itself sound much more complicated than it needs to be.

I love experimenting with grind size, temperature, ratios and extraction, but you absolutely do not need a laboratory to enjoy good coffee.

Brew it the way you like it.

And if something does not taste quite right, change something and try again.

Every coffee is different, every grinder is different, and everybody's taste is different too.

If you ever want help getting more from one of my coffees, just get in touch. Tell me what you are brewing with and what you are tasting, and I will happily help you work through it.

For Coffee Explorer subscribers, that experimentation is very much part of the adventure.

Chris sitting at a desk watchin roasting curves on the Roaster.

Independent, curious and deliberately small

What’s Bean Grinding is not a big coffee company pretending to be a little one.

There is no roasting team, marketing department or mysterious warehouse.

It is me, Chris.

That means the person choosing the green coffee is the same person developing the roast profile, roasting your beans, packing the bags and probably answering your message if you get in touch.

Keeping things small allows me to buy coffees because I genuinely find them exciting, including unusual origins and very limited lots that would make little sense for a larger roastery.

That is exactly how I like it.

Explore the Scottish Highlands Roastery