About us

Who We Are

We’re a small family business start-up, who wish to share our passion and knowledge of coffee roasting to give you the best experience tasting freshly roasted speciality coffee.

Our Mission

We’re passionate about doing it right! From sourcing the best quality green beans to methodical roasting techniques, we're committed to providing you with the best possible coffee tasting experience when using our precision roasted coffees.

Roasting

Our 'Novoroaster' is the reason we are called Roast Lab Coffee Roasters. Magnificent German engineering embodying our roasting principles: Methodical, Precision and Consistency; batch after batch. ​

The 'Novoroaster' is a 'fluid-bed' or 'hot-air' roaster. This type of roasting produces a very 'clean' bean as opposed to drum roasting which is very smoky due to the oils released during each roast continually burning on the drum. We believe 'fluid-bed' roasting to be a healthier roasting method.

We can roast a maximum of 2kg of speciality green coffee beans per batch. A small batch size guarantees consistent inner-bean development and better quality control.

Roast profiles are developed for each 'origin' based on density, moisture content and varietal characteristics. The roast profiles are programmed for repeatable batch roasting that is precise and consistent, batch after batch.

Grinding

We chose the Mazzer ZM Digital Grinder for the same reasons as our Novoroaster - precision and consistency.

Ground coffee particles are measured in Microns (µm), so the grind setting is understandable, accurate and repeatable.

It's low rpm motor and double ventilation system keeps the ground coffee cool during grinding, preserving flavours and aromatic compounds.

It also benefits from electronic True Zero Calibration and Alignment. The 'perfect' burr parallelism is so perfect it is within a 20µm tolerance; aligned better than the width of two sheets of aluminium foil. For this reason, particle size distribution is near perfect, resulting in higher extractions.

The ZM digital grinder passed the Qualified Testing protocol by World Coffee Events (WCE) in 2017.

Testing & Measurement

During the development of roasting profiles, we like to make sure we're doing it right. As roasters, we need to have certainty that our roasted beans are not over-developed or under-developed which would cause undesirable flavours and aromas.

With the Tonino Roast Colour Meter, we can be assured that our desired roast degree (light, medium, dark) has been achieved.

Measuring extraction with a refractometer can help to identify if roasted beans are over or under developed.