SA WAKES UP TO COFFEE

When it comes to coffee, a new generation of South Africans mean business

In a Braamfontein warehouse, Brilliant Ndlovu dips a large metal scoop into a plastic bag filled with greenish-white beans from Ethiopia. He shovels the beans into a bucket on a scale, then, bucket in hand, climbs a stepladder beside a roasting machine and dumps the beans into a big funnel at the top.

Back on the floor Ndlovu fiddles with a laptop beside the machine, studying the colourful graphs on the screen. He reaches for a switch, flips it, and the roaster roars to life.

Visible through a tiny glass portal in the front of the machine the beans tumble and spin. Over the next 12 minutes the beans change from greenish-white, to beige, to brown.

A load of already roasted beans spins around the drum at the base of the machine. Metal arms move the beans like ripples in a lake. Those beans are cooling, almost ready to be emptied out of the drum and packaged at the back of the warehouse.

When they are done and the drum has been emptied, and when Ndlovu is certain the roasting beans’ colour and temperature are perfect, he throws a lever.

The machine’s mouth opens, spitting hot beans into the drum. A cloud of steam rises, and a smattering of pops is heard. This is what Ndlovu calls “the first crack”, when moisture builds up inside the bean and bursts forth, cracking the outer shell.

The beans have just become coffee.

Ndlovu has been roasting for Bean There Coffee Company since 2011; the firm has been around since 2005. It has three roasteries, two in Joburg and one in Cape Town, and supplies single-origin fair-trade beans to grocery stores and coffee shops across SA. The beans are bagged and labelled by country — Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi.

When Ndlovu is asked which bean he likes best, he chuckles and shakes his head. “It’s like having seven children and [being