Getting back to the beans

A speciality coffee roaster inspired by childhood memories

WILL LITTLE GREW UP with the smell of coffee. His parents ran a roasting company in Devon, and while his father tended to the vast, cast-iron roasting machine, he scampered about on the 60-kilo coffee sacks. ‘Naturally,’ Little says, wryly, ‘I had no inclination to carry on the family business.’

He went into graphic design instead, landing a job in London close to Borough Market, where he would regularly visit Monmouth Coffee for a caffeine fix and, if the wind blew the right way, could catch the scent of its renowned roastery from his office. ‘It reminded me of my parents’ approach,’ he says, and so eventually he moved back to Devon with his wife, Caroline, to launch Roastworks Coffee Co. ‘I messed around with a five-kilo machine and managed to get our coffee listed with Whole Foods and Harvey Nichols,’ he tells me, but an upgrade was sorely needed. Little’s parents had since sold their business, but the several-ton GW Barth roaster was dragged out of storage and, after six months of meticulous refurbishment, became ‘the heart and soul of what we do. There’s no better family heirloom.’

Roastworks sources beans from every growing region ( just before we spoke Little had tried some from China, an emerging market). They arrive green (raw) and smell ‘grassy’, and are roasted for between 11 and 14 minutes, turning through pale yellow to ever-darkening shades of brown. ‘They only start to taste of coffee in the last three or four minutes, when the chemical compounds change.’ His Kenyan beans yield blackcurrant notes, while the Ethiopean is all florals – jasmine, peach, orange blossom. ‘It’s a taste trip around the world.’

Will Little and his parents’ roaster. Below ‘Raw’ green beans, and the finished product