New feature in Food & Drink Business: Kim and the coffee factory

Take a look at what Food & Drink Business shared about The Wood Roaster:

When Kim Loupis from The Wood Roaster was looking for a way to make his coffee stand out in a crowded market, he ended up looking to the past and throwing a log on the fire. Jan Arreza writes. This article was first published in Food & Drink Business April 2021.

Speciality coffeehouse The Wood Roaster is drawing upon the old traditions and principles of wood-fired artisan roasting and combining it with a new custom-built, temperature-controlled air roaster with data logging technology.

The fire and air creation came about when founder Kim Loupis was looking to make his coffee stand out in a crowd where everyone had been using the same equipment and methods for years. He decided to look to the past for inspiration.

“Starting off in a café in Darlinghurst, Sydney, I began to see that everyone was just doing the same thing and using the same products. I wanted to have a point of difference in the marketplace and do things that no one else was doing,” explains Loupis.

“Back in the old days, they used to have the furnace directly underneath the roasting drum, but they were never able to control the temperature. It was a case of just throw everything in and hope for the best.”

Loupis was hooked. “This was the traditional way they made coffee, and this unique and artisan process delivered a more crisp and enhanced flavour profile.”

And his quest began, researching and reading everything he could on wood fire roasting to ultimately design a custom-built coffee roasting machine. The result is The Wood Roaster, the only wood roasted coffee company in Australia with the only set-up of its kind in the world.

“I settled on a machine with a separate furnace that is an air roaster. It doesn’t produce smoke, so the flavour isn’t affected.

“It also has a control system for the temperature, which we can run from the computer to the exact temperature degree we want,” he explains.

The Wood Roaster uses the dry heat from the wood roasting machine to caramelise its beans. It delivers “a cleaner, sweeter and full bodied” result compared to using a gas roaster, Loupis says.

For The Wood Roaster account manager Melissa Johnson, the stand-out feature of the roasting machine is its consistency and the flavour profiles it delivers.

You can read the full article over at: http://www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au/news/kim-and-the-coffee-factory