The Roastery

The Nincomsoup Micro Roastery was born in the summer of 2024, the product of about 2 years of research and study, and only recently have we gained enough confidence in our abilities as a roaster to offer coffees that truly reflect the expression of their origin. Our roasting approach is based on science, as opposed to artistry, and our knowledge is largely attributable to 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).

All 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 will be offering a range of retail coffees both espresso and filter for purchase in the cafe and eventually online.

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

cracking the combination

As a specialty roaster you buy green beans, apply heat, bag them, stick a label on, and hopefully sell them for a profit. Sounds easy, and the truth is that the green beans essentially arrive gift wrapped with 90% of the work already complete. All the magical flavours have already been packed and locked inside the bean, the roaster only needs to crack the combination of this mini bean vault, shine a spotlight on some or all of the crown jewels (flavours) and then add their 10% (the final polish?), which is largely a decision as to how much carmalisation they want to introduce into the roast, which roughly translates as the final bean colour, and this colour might land anywhere from a super light Nordic roast all the way to an Italian Stallion dark roast.

The flavour of specialty coffee is the product of varietal, micro climate, elevation, process, drying, and storage, all of which starts with the diligence of the farmer. As a roaster you are limited to the inherent flavours locked inside your green bean, aside from caramelisation, you cannot create flavours that are not already present in the bean.

conservation goal

We’ve established that as a roaster, these are not OUR ‘coffees’, they are merely OUR ‘roast’, and with that in mind our goal is to source specialty grade green beans and roast in a style that preserves the natural terroir and origin flavours that make a particular coffee unique. Perhaps we should call ourselves conservationists, we merely want to preserve and honour all the hard work that has gone before, the work that helps us roast great tasting coffee, but that has to start with rewarding the farmer with a fair price and a sustainable business.

When we started diving deep into coffee origins it quickly became clear that coffee farmers have serious challenges ahead due to climate change, and with conservation at our heart we made the decision to become 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 livlihoods.

OUR COFFEE JOURNEY

From the outset, we put a huge effort into our coffee offer, opening our doors with a traditional Italian style coffee offer 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 specially formulated milk from select breeds of cows reared to produce milk solely for use with 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 Cafe partnering with local roaster Coldblow, who started life as a mobile espresso van on Hythe beach. To help 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 cafe coffee offer 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 coffee filters.