Page 8 - Food & Drink Magazine April 2021

✷ RISING STAR
Kim and the coffee factory
When Kim Loupis from The Wood Roaster was looking for a way to make his coffee stand out in a crowded market, he ended up looking to the past and throwing a log on the fire. Jan Arreza writes.
SPECIALITY coffeehouse The Wood Roaster is drawing upon the old traditions and principles of wood-fired artisan roasting and combining it with a new custom-built, temperature- controlled air roaster with data logging technology.
The fire and air creation came about when founder Kim Loupis was looking to make his coffee stand out in a crowd where everyone had been using the same equipment and methods for years. He decided to look to the past for inspiration.
“Starting off in a café in Darlinghurst, Sydney, I began to see that everyone was just doing the same thing and using the same products. I wanted to have a point of difference in the marketplace and do things that no one else was doing,” explains Loupis.
“Back in the old days, they used to have the furnace directly underneath the roasting drum, but they were never able to control the temperature. It was a case of just throw everything in and hope for the best.”
Loupis was hooked. “This was the traditional way they
made coffee, and this unique and artisan process delivered a more crisp and enhanced flavour profile.”
And his quest began, researching and reading everything he could on wood fire roasting to ultimately design a custom-built coffee roasting machine. The result is The Wood Roaster, the only wood roasted coffee company in Australia with the only set-up of its kind in the world.
“I settled on a machine with a separate furnace that is an air
It delivers “a cleaner, sweeter and full bodied” result compared to using a gas roaster, Loupis says.
For The Wood Roaster account manager Melissa Johnson, the stand-out feature of the roasting machine is its consistency and the flavour profiles it delivers.
Johnson has worked in the industry for more than 20 years and has been with the business since the very beginning.
“Because of the computerised technology, it is as simple as logging the necessary details in.
ABOVE: The Wood Roaster team is roaster Satin Rau; owner Kim Loupis; sales manager Mel Johnson; and operations manager Phil Henley.
roaster. It doesn’t produce smoke, so the flavour isn’t affected.
“It also has a control system for the temperature, which we can run from the computer to the exact temperature degree we want,” he explains.
The Wood Roaster uses the dry heat from the wood roasting machine to caramelise its beans.
We pull up the roasting profile for a specific bean and once it is set, the roaster will go to the exact degree set for every single blend. And every single bean will come out the same,” Johnson explains.
It takes just six seconds to roast a bean to perfection, she says.
“It brings out the next level of
8 | Food&Drink business | April 2021 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
“ It brings out the next level of uniqueness to our flavour profiles. We are bringing back the old traditions, but with the added benefit of today’s technology.”