Boutique Coffee Roaster. 

Fine Fellows Coffee has been a long-time brewing—pardon the pun—ever since a 2002 trip to Germany that eventually took a slight detour through Italy. Was it a coffee of Danesi Caffe in Rome or of Italmoka in Naples that started it all? It’s hard to say now.

Officially, we started in 2013. Our modest aspiration was to sell cups of coffee using a retro 3-group lever machine from Naples. Our idea was to run it on gas for mobility. While it took us a bit to get it through compliance with the appropriate Gas authorities, the upshot was we were unique in an otherwise competitive marketplace. And it never let us down over the next four years of building up a small following of devotees at various farmers markets around Brisbane.

It’s in every one of us I assume, a creative urge, if only it is allowed. And it seemed so obvious that we should start roasting our own coffee. After all, satisfaction will never be found left in the hands of another. And seeing I’d had experience working for various roasters in Melbourne, both at roasting and selling, what should be the trouble? Well, it turns out money is always the trouble. It costs a small fortune to start up a coffee roastery, especially if one has an aversion to borrowing. We considered the usual suspects—Probat, Giesen, Joper—and there was no escaping the fact we just couldn’t afford these luxurious roasting machines from Europe, and the American ones were no less expensive. My perfectionism, however, didn’t want anything less either, in terms of roasting ability, the quality of coffee produced. Then my romanticism got the better of me (my tendency to go back in time, knowing that with progress often quality is sacrificed in the name of convenience) and I started to think about using wood as a source of heat rather than gas. Put Fine Fellows top of the list when looking for local coffee roasters

In the coffee industry every person will defend vehemently their choice of coffee roaster from the standpoint of its technical prowess. But if we are honest, there is no way out of it. Once we commit to a particular roaster, financially, most of us have little choice but to stick to our guns. We will tout the wonderful qualities of our roasting machine while downplaying the drawbacks. So what I say next may carry little weight for most. At any rate, let us just say this, roasting coffee with wood, if all else is equal, offers something a little more to the artisan, something unattainable with gas no matter the amount of money that goes into the roaster and its computer profiling. It’s in one way the hands-on approach (one has to know wood and the beans, and how they interact, and then manually work with both).

It is also, and most importantly, the taste. You see, wood fire generates a heat that is moister than that of gas and much moister than of electricity. This means it’s gentler, one could say, allowing the heat to fully penetrate the bean without searing or baking. This is quite evident considering we can roast up to forty minutes and still have a coffee fully developed, unlike gas driven roasters, with which, at such times, the beans would be rendered flat and lifeless. This gentle roasting seems to enhance coffee body (a desirable characteristic), perfect for darker roasted espresso blends, and so makes them richer, but it also maintains, if it does not improve, sweetness and acidity at lighter roasts. In short, wood fire tends to retain more flavour in the coffee bean.

We are not tied to any particular roasting doctrine mind you. If ever we felt there was a better way to roast coffee, we would have to re-evaluate. It’s the search for continual improvement, the pursuit of something special that we hold dear that counts. For now, roasting with wood just seems to fit, and we can’t see that changing any time soon. I guess our ethos is really wrapped up in that quote by Dickens at the beginning. And if we can continue to do just this, always reflecting on efforts, striving for something better, from an authentic perspective, then we have done our job.

Now we have our bean roaster on our rural property on the Sunshine Coast, selling coffee beans to surrounding areas as well as Brisbane, with the intention of gradually expanding nationally. In the end, it’s our customers’ loyalty and feedback which gives us confidence we are on the right track. Trust local coffee roasters to deliver a pure coffee experience.