The new Orkney roaster brings freshly roasted specialty coffee to the Scottish Isles
A new Orkney, Scotland-based roastery is sourcing and roasting specialty coffee beans from around the world, in the first commercial venture of its kind in the islands. Orkney, also known as Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland.
The Orkney Roastery is located at Unit 2 Scotts Road, Hatston, Kirkwall, Orkney, KW15 1GR. Established by Sara Tait and Euan Smith, the Orkney Roastery produces small batches of its own Aria brand coffees at its micro-roastery in Kirkwall for supply to shops, cafés, restaurants, and hotels.
Tait and Smith are partners with Orkney business, training and advice consultancy, Sorton, but speciality coffee has long been a shared passion, one that planted the seed for this new enterprise.
“Anyone who has tasted freshly roasted coffee, produced with real care for the beans and attention to detail in terms of the process, will know it’s a completely different experience from drinking, say, instant coffee from a jar,” explains Smith, a former operations director with the Edinburgh Tea and Coffee Company. “The downside is that it’s quite hard to get hold of genuine, freshly roasted coffee in Orkney, given our location and the occasional transport issues that presents.
“We’ve worked closely with the food and drink and catering sectors in Orkney for many years and felt there was a real opportunity here for a micro-roastery, which could supply a premium product for people to enjoy globally,” says Smith.
Tait adds, “Euan has dealt with a lot of coffee in his career and has always said he one day wanted to roast his own. I’m equally passionate about coffee and the idea of creating a micro-roastery in Orkney has always been there in the background as we’ve worked together in our day jobs. We eventually decided that if we were going to do it, then this was the right time.”
The company commissioned a special 10-kg gas roaster from Toper and customised it to achieve the exact control and recording capabilities to match their roasting processes.
“As we progress, we’ll be sourcing a whole range of coffees from relatively well-known and popular places, such as Colombia and Kenya, but we’ll also have some more exotic specialities,” says Tait. “We’ll then work with those coffees to figure out the best way to treat and roast the green beans and how to get the best flavour out of them. Our production runs will be very small, 8-10kg at a time, so we can fine-tune the process and zero in on what really works. We’re making sure that every coffee we produce meets the profiles we want to match.”
Smith says Orkney Roastery will be offering whole bean coffee, along with cafetiere, filter and espresso grinds. “We’re also working on developing our own special blends, particularly espressos, where we’re keen to offer some real variety, ranging from the quite traditional Italian-styles blends, right through to modern espresso interpretations,” he adds.
Each roast being produced under the Aria brand has a musical theme – Aria was a coffee loving character in Johann Sebastian Bach’s comic opera, The Coffee Cantata. For example, the company’s Colombian coffee is named Bolero, and its first espresso is called Overture.
Green coffee beans arriving at the Orkney Roastery are put through a rigorous traceability system before being sample roasted and cupped to check flavour. “Our manual process takes time and attention and it means you can get that bit more flavour out of the beans,” says Smith. “Our customers, particularly locally, will have the opportunity to enjoy freshly roasted coffee that will now be readily available on their doorstep.”
“In terms of our market, there are lots of people out there who are interested in fresh coffee and keen to explore new options,” says Tait. “We’d also love to attract instant coffee drinkers…and we also ultimately want to give catering establishments in Orkney the chance to commission special blends and roasts, so they can offer their own bespoke coffees to customers.”
The new Orkney Roastery is part of Orkney Food and Drink, a member organization that represents Orkney Islands’ leading producers.