ROEST on the road: Coffee roasting adventures in Norway
What happens when you give a UX intern/ex-barista an L100 Plus sample roaster to play with on her summer holiday in Northern Norway?
Collaboration is always fun; even more fun when you can combine it with vacation, friends and amazing roasting locations. The summer of 2024 allowed me to bring a ROEST L100 Plus to Henningsvær – a fishing village in Lofoten, north of Norway, famously known for its oceanside football pitch and mountains overlooking tropical-esque waters.
The ROEST L100 Plus, ready to roast coffee
Roastery in Henningsvær
The idea sprung forth after our successful journey to World of Coffee in Copenhagen. The amazing people we met and their enthusiasm for our machine from all over the world inspired me to bring the sample roaster to another world center. In the summer, Henningsvær is full of people from all over the world, visitors from China to Ireland come to witness how the mountains pop up from the ocean. I worked as a barista here for two years, and the love for coffee exists even way up here. My cafe manager successor (Guy van Rijsbergen) and I briefly talked in the spring about establishing a roastery in Henningsvær in Lofoten, Norway. The enthusiasm was tangible; one of the locals sparkled when she heard about the idea, “Imagine the smell of newly roasted coffee gusting across town. It would be wonderful!” Even if the smell of coffee would have to compete with the smell of drying fish for 4 months in the spring, we all agreed that it would be wonderful to have a roastery.
Time flew. No roastery appeared in the spring of 2024. July came, and I called Henningsvær again. What if I brought a ROEST L100 Plus sample roaster with me on vacation? That way, we could do some user testing—user experience is, after all, my job—maybe host an event and let people know what roasting is about.
We seldom have time and opportunity to go all this way for our customers. However, the stars aligned in July. And when they do – it is pure joy!
Neither Guy nor I had any experience roasting. But, as it happened, Guy’s brother, Siebe van Rijsbergen, visited in July. Siebe is a seven-year roaster, at Man Met Bril Koffie in Rotterdam, Netherlands. However, sadly (or luckily), his skills in roasting and sharing coffee knowledge are now used as a teacher. Siebe brought a selection of green beans and ROEST supplied us with the roaster. Suddenly, we had a functioning summer roastery! We had roasting experience, a sick location and a roaster. Now, only the 22 hours south to north drive from Oslo to Henningsvær stood in the way. However, with a Pelicased roaster and a van to live in, the journey was smooth and easy.
Picture: Siebe van Rijsbergen and Guro Handeland (left to right)
Picture: Guy van Rijsbergen
Setting up our coffee roastery
The day I arrived we met and started planning. When would we roast? When would we cup? How could we share coffee knowledge with more people? The idea was to experiment with the roaster, but also share the journey of the coffee beans from berry to cup to make it more common knowledge, became our motivation. That way we would cultivate the soil for a specialty coffee roastery in Henningsvær, while sharing our own joy for coffee.
One roast in, the ROEST L100 Plus had captivated the van Rijsbergen brothers. If the screen was a pool they would have dived into it.
Teaching the art of specialty coffee
You will never understand the coffee journey without photos of the tree, the farmers and the berry itself. The roasting is crucial for taste, but knowledge about the berry and its growing conditions is key. Then the drying process. What happens? When you have all this, you can start roasting. We set up a 2-hour session: 1 hour to go through the process until the roast is finished then 1 hour to do a full cupping session.
On the day of the event, the sun was out. It was hot–that siesta time kind of hot. Siebe had sprained his ankle the evening before. Guy had a busy cafe full of customers. The wifi was not working as it should. The queue ran out into the street. We ran around with dishes, tried to help the working baristas, and tried to get the event ready.
9 people out of 10 tickets arrived. We took a deep breath and dived into the coffee world.
Questions like “Will the coffee value chain look more like the wine value chain in the future?”, “Will there be more coffee roasting on the farms?”, “How are the working conditions for coffee pickers?” and “Why not have a hydrometer in the machine to detect bean moisture?” came forth. The participants proved that given the right information – the coffee bean journey is fascinating.
The ROEST L100 Plus worked like a charm. With a projector on the wall, we looked at the bean rate of rise, the differences between bean temperature, air temperature and inlet temperature profiles, and how the first crack detection actually works. And, even more importantly–what happens during the development phase.
After a short break, we started our cupping. The participants were given personal ROEST Cupping spoons. With the information from the first part of our session, the blind cupping was sufficient for the participants to find distinctions between the coffees. And running through the different processings, regions and altitudes, the cupping was - as it is - an amazing summary of the coffee journey.
How the L100 Plus transformed our summer holiday
Combining vacation, friends and amazing roasting locations is highly recommended. And possible! It struck me that it is possible to create a professional, specialty coffee roastery anywhere with the ROEST Sample roasters. It might not seem designed for travel, but this trip (and the Pelicase the roaster traveled in) proved it is possible. Thanks to Guy and Siebe van Rijsbergen and to Trevarefabrikken for their hospitality. We accomplished our goal of creating a summer roastery!
Meet the writer
Picture: Guro Handeland - UX Designer, ROEST
Guro Handeland has worked for ROEST as a UX designer since October 2023. She is also currently writing her master's thesis about the digitalization of health care at University of Oslo. Her passion for coffee dates back to an espresso made in rural Italy in 2012. For two years, she was the café manager at Trevarefabrikken – a hotel, bar, cafe, restaurant and venue house in Henningsvær, Lofoten. This is also where she was introduced to coffee roasting, and where she first discovered ROEST.
