Batch 0412 · 9 kg on a 12 kg drum · Karst Hollow, VT
Colour lies. A bean can look like City and taste like sawdust if it got there the wrong way. So here is the actual profile behind our shelf — bean temperature against time, the three points we drop at, and what the bean looks like at each one. Scrub it, or pick a roast level and watch where it lands.
Stage 1 of 10
Nine kilos of room-temperature green into a 208 °C drum. The probe reads the drum first, then falls with the beans.
Playback runs at 40× — an 11:40 roast takes 17.5 seconds to watch. Temperatures are bean temp on a probe in the bean mass, not drum air.
On the shelf · roasted Tuesday and Friday
Every bag is stamped with its drop time and development, so you can see it on the curve above. The swatch on each card is the colour the bean actually reaches at that drop — same ramp, same clock, no marketing brown.
Ethiopia · Guji
Bergamot, white peach, jasmine, tea-like finish.
Colombia · Huila
Red apple, panela, orange blossom.
Costa Rica · Tarrazú
Nectarine, brown sugar, a dusting of cardamom.
Brazil · Cerrado Mineiro
Cocoa nib, roasted almond, dried fig.
Subscription & wholesale
Roasted to order, never from a warehouse. Rates are per kilo of roasted coffee delivered, and they do not move with volume mid-contract — you get the band you order in, from the first bag.
One bag every 14 or 28 days, your pick of any coffee on the shelf or roaster's choice if you would rather be surprised. 15% off retail, free shipping over $40, skip or swap any time before the Sunday cut-off. A 14-day cadence is 26 bags a year; 28 days is 13.
Bench
6 – 15 kg per month
Best for a 40-seat room or a second site finding its feet.
Bar
16 – 45 kg per month
Where most of our accounts sit. 20 kg is roughly 1,100 doubles.
House
46 kg per month and up
Multi-site groups and anyone running two grinders on bar.
Two things we do not do. We do not write exclusivity clauses — if you want a guest coffee from someone else, pour it. And we do not lend machines, because a loaned grinder is just a contract with extra steps. Equipment you finance stays yours.
Brewing
These are the recipes we hand to wholesale accounts, unchanged. Start here, then move one variable at a time — grind first, then ratio, then temperature. If you change two you have learned nothing.
| Method | Dose | Water / yield | Ratio | Temp | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pourover, one cup | 15 g | 240 g | 1:16 | 95 °C | 2:30 – 2:45 Bloom 40 g for 30 s, then two even pours. |
| Pourover, two cups | 22 g | 352 g | 1:16 | 95 °C | 2:45 – 3:15 Bloom 55 g for 35 s, then three pours of ~100 g. |
| Immersion, 8 cup | 55 g | 880 g | 1:16 | 95 °C | 4:00 steep Break the crust at 4:00, plunge slowly, decant all of it. |
| Batch brew, 3.8 L | 228 g | 3,800 g | 1:16.7 | 96 °C | 5:30 – 6:30 60 g per litre. Grind a click finer than your pourover. |
| Espresso · City+ | 18 g | 41 g out | 1:2.3 | 94 °C | 28 – 32 s Lighter roasts need the longer ratio to finish sweet. |
| Espresso · Full City | 18 g | 36 g out | 1:2 | 92 °C | 25 – 30 s Cooler water keeps the darker roast off the bitter edge. |
Fresh off the drum is not the same as ready. Coffee is still venting CO₂, and CO₂ pushes water away from grounds. Filter: 4 to 10 days off roast. Espresso: 7 to 16 days. The roast date is on the bag; there is no best-before because there is no cliff, just a slow fade after about six weeks.
Sour and thin means grind finer — you are under-extracting, and no amount of extra water fixes it. Harsh and drying means grind coarser. Only once the brew tastes balanced-but-weak should you touch the ratio. Weigh everything; volume lies by up to 20%.
Closed bag, valve up, room temperature, out of the light. Not the fridge — it is humid and full of smells. Freezing genuinely works, but only in one-shot portions you never thaw twice: pull them straight from the freezer and grind frozen.
Come stand next to the drum
Eight cups on the table, two of them roasts we got wrong on purpose so you can taste what under-developed actually means. No spitting into a bucket unless you want to — most people just drink it. Bring nothing; we have spoons.
If you are a cafe, come on a Tuesday instead. You can watch your own coffee go through first crack, and we will hand you the batch card off the printer.
118 Rill Street, Unit 4
Karst Hollow, VT 05464
(802) 555-0142 · bench@meridian.example