ROASTED & AGED IN NEW ZEALAND
Our secretive team of coffee roasting artisans practise their craft in the clean air of Wellington New Zealand, the sparkling harbour town where Fuel Espresso was founded.
Our centralised roasting house remains in the countryside adjacent to Wellington where the air quality, cool southerly wind and atmospheric pressure create the most ideal conditions for roasting coffee in the world, allowing us to maintain our consistency.
WASHED ARABICA SPECIALITY BEANS
Speciality coffee is not new to us.
Since 1996, we have insisted on using only washed arabica speciality coffee beans. Washed coffees are de-husked using water on the coffee plantation. It’s a more expensive process that brings out the clean delicate flavours in beans.
Over the years, we deepened our relationships with coffee growers, improving the complexity of the green beans that formed our two signature blends. Some of these beans have come via our founder’s coffee growing roots, so we alone can access them.
BATCH ROASTED
We roast in vintage Probat UG22 machines, because we’re old school purists.
These beautiful machines are built from the highest-grade German steel. They have become the cult coffee roasting machines in our industry because they have never been surpassed in terms of the control and consistency they allow a master coffee roaster to achieve.
All our coffee is roasted by hand in 20-kilogram batches, limiting it to the size at which we can maintain quality to the level we demand.
Each batch is evaluated by our tasting team, and each bag is packed and dated by hand by the roaster to confirm it meets our standards.
BATCH TASTED
After arriving by overnight courier, each batch of roasted coffee is evaluated a second time by quality control teams in Hong Kong and Shanghai before being used in any of our espresso bars.
Coffee tasting is very similar to wine tasting. Coffee is assessed on aroma, acidity, body, sweetness and balance. We use our olfactory senses to assess aroma while we use our sense of taste to assess the other four attributes.
Our quality control leaders are all qualified Q Graders, the highest global qualification available for a coffee taster.
BETTER WHEN AGED
Over years of product development, we decided to age our coffee, contrary to the global industry’s obsession with the “fresh is best” dogma.
We have learnt that both our coffee blends taste better when aged under conditions where temperature, oxygen and humidity are strictly controlled.
Under these optimal conditions the flavour characteristics of our blends continue to develop for four months after the roasting date. Our beans are kept in this controlled environment at our roasting house and espresso bars until the day they leave our hands.
We conducted in-depth research into packaging material and de-gassing valves and found the ones we believe are the best to age our roasted coffee. Our coffee bags protect the roasted coffee from the external environment extending its shelf life for optimal ageing.
