The Roastery

The Nincomsoup Micro Roastery was founded in the summer of 2024, the product of 2 years of research and study. Our roasting approach is heavily influenced by the work of two pre-eminent roasting educators and consultants: Rob Hoos (Founder of Iteration.Coffee and Author of ‘Modulating The Flavour Profile of Coffee’) and Morten Münchow (Founder of CoffeeMind roasting school and co-author of a number of published coffee research papers including ‘Roasting Conditions and Coffee Flavor: A Multi-Study Empirical Investigation’).

Our coffee is roasted in Hythe at The Malthouse on a 1Kg Aillio Bullet, this is an innovative induction drum roaster, enabling us to offer coffees with a smaller carbon footprint compared to traditional gas drum roasters. As well as roasting for the cafe we offer a range of retail coffees for purchase in the cafe, with plans to eventually offer online sales.

Over the coming months we will be adding more coffee related resources to our website, we hope you join us on this exciting journey, we promise to make it informative and flavoursome for anyone who jumps in.

cracking the combination

As a roaster you buy green beans, apply heat, bag them, stick a label on, and hopefully sell with a profit. Sounds easy, and the truth is that the green beans essentially arrive gift wrapped with 90% of the work complete. All the magical flavours have already been packed and locked inside the bean, the roaster only needs to crack the combination of the bean vault, shine a spotlight on the jewels (flavours) and add their 10% (the final polish).

The skill for the specialty coffee roaster in cracking the combination is understanding the required temperature and duration for each roast, and that will depend on the bean’s process, density, variety, moisture content, intended brew method, and target roast degree. As a roaster you are limited to the inherent flavours locked inside your green bean, you cannot create flavours that are not already present in the bean. However, the roaster has some degree of creativity, they can manipulate the mouth feel, the acidity, the sweetness, and the complexity of the existing flavours, but essentially you are trying to preserve and honour all the hard work that has gone before, the hard work and diligence of the farmer and producer that made it possible for you to roast great tasting coffee.

A coffee with orange citrus character might be roasted to display ‘bright, light, tangy orange citrus with honey sweetness’, or the exact same bean might be roasted to display a ‘marmalade, syrupy mouth feel with caramel sweetness’. The more experience a roaster gets with a particular coffee variety and process the more skilled they become at cracking the combination to direct the spotlight on the attributes that they want to highlight.

SUSTAINABILITY for the farmer

As a roaster we have to be mindful that these are not ‘our coffees’, but merely ‘our roast’, and credit should be given to the farmer or cooperative and producer, they are the celebrity, and they should be the headline on a bag of coffee. Our goal is to source specialty grade green beans, where the farmer is rewarded with a fair price to help maintain a sustainable business that will positively impact their family and local community.

When we started diving deep into coffee origins it quickly became clear that coffee farmers have serious challenges ahead due to climate change, and as a roaster we want to ensure we do everything we possibly can to ensure the future of coffee. The vast majority of coffee is produced by smallholders, a staggering 25 million small holders produce 80% of the worlds coffee.

In 2024 we became a member of World Coffee Research (WCR), joining the ranks of 170 other Coffee Roasters from all around the globe. Annual membership fees go towards developing coffee breeding programs that will provide climate resistant varieties, improve productivity, coffee quality, and ultimately farmer livelihoods.

OUR COFFEE JOURNEY

From the outset, we put a huge effort into our coffee offer, opening our doors with a traditional Italian style coffee that at the time competed with the best of the then emerging coffee chains. Then in 2005 we partnered with Union Coffee, one of the Grand Daddys’ of the specialty coffee movement. This was a departure from the traditional dark roast style prevalent at the time, and embraced a new wave of lighter roasts with an emphasis on origin and sustainability.

We continued to develop and push our coffee offer, being one of the very first UK cafes to introduce oat mylk, and the first to partner and serve The Estate Dairy milk, a milk from select breeds of cows reared to produce milk exclusively for coffee; unheard of at the time, Estate Dairy were the pioneers in this field. In 2015 we partnered with our Shoreditch neighbours, Ozone Coffee roasters, and added single origin batch brews, cold brew, house made almond mylk, and a retail area devoted to coffee brew equipment.

In 2022, we opened our Hythe location partnering with local roaster Coldblow, who started life as a mobile espresso van on Hythe beach, before graduating to a cafe and roastery. To reduce the cafe carbon foot print we made the decision to drop dairy milk and exclusively serve organic oat mylk from Minor Figures, a carbon neutral British born and bred company.

Our Hythe cafe now includes single origin batch brews, summer cold brews, and for the first time, nitro, and no doubt some other experiments along the way. We love talking coffee, come by for a chat, a brew, and check out our coffee retail area curated with our favourite pieces of kit, including Kent’s largest selection of paper, cloth, and metal coffee filters.