Square Mile Coffee Roasters

THE BEGINNING OF THE SQUARE MILE ROASTERY STORY

Square Mile Coffee Roasters was born in 2008 by just two people. Anette Moldvaer and James Hoffmann. Unless you are a complete newcomer to the coffee world, you are no stranger to the name James Hoffmann. James became a world champion barista in 2007 and in recent years he has also been known as a coffee influencer and consultant. His YouTube channel is already followed by almost a million people. Anette too has had a lot of success. One of them is winning theWorld Cup Tasters Championship.

The roaster focuses primarily on wholesale and works primarily with like-minded businesses. Their coffee can be enjoyed in many cafes in the UK, as well as in countries across Europe.

The Square Mile Coffee Roaster has also had a logo with a statue of the mythical creature Griffin inherent to it for a few years now. This can be found on every packet of coffee. Source.

SQUARE MILE COFFEE - 3 FACTORS TO CONSIDER

Traceability, deliciousness and seasonalityare the most important factors for choosing the coffee to be roasted at Square Mile . A great example of this is their Red Brick espresso blend, which has been a staple on the menu, but its composition always adapts to the season.

THE COFFEE ROASTING PROCESS

Square Mile Coffee Roasters hasn't been a small roastery for a few years now, they produce a lot of coffee every month, and that's part of the reason why you'll find not one, but two roasters in their roastery. Thefirst one is the Probat G75, which as the name suggests can hold up to 75 kg of coffee. It roasts mainly espresso coffee, as this is in slightly higher demand in the UK. The G75 roasts the amount of coffee that is in the whole bag, which is 60 or 69kg. Any espresso blends are blended up from the roasted coffee. This is mainly for the ease of handling the coffee after roasting.

The second roaster is the Probat UG15, which preceded the G75. It is now designed primarily for filter roasting coffee.

The entire roasting and packaging process is quite mechanized at Square Mile, from the pouring of heavy bags of coffee into the roaster to the pouring of coffee into the packets. This makes the roasters' and other employees' jobs easier so they can produce as large quantities as they do.
It's also because they moved to a bigger facility in 2019, so they've streamlined the whole process down to the last bean.

SQUARE MILE COFFEE QUALITY TESTING

The roastery also includes a room where the roasters check the quality of the taste by cupping. The correct roasting profile is also checked by a machine that evaluates whether the beans are the right colour and weight.

There is not one cupping room, but two. The second one is for the whole team. It also includes a training centre where they train primarily their wholesale customers and occasionally regular customers.

ROASTING PROJECTS

Like many large roasters, Square Mile is involved in projects that help improve conditions in countries where choice coffee is grown in large quantities. Conversely, sometimes these are countries that are not traditionally associated with coffee growing. One of these is Yemen, which was the focus of the Spring 2021.

Part of the Amal Yemenproject (translated as Hope for Yemen) was to create a coffee set that included coffee from different parts of Yemen in different varieties and in different processing. Several roasters supplied coffee for the set, and Square Mile was one of them.