Cravens Coffee is the proud owner of a restored 1940 Probat cast-iron roaster. Operating this workhorse by hand, we’re able to control temperature and airflow throughout the roasting cycle and steward every batch to its perfect roast point. And by perfect, we mean reflecting the growing region’s soil, altitude and environment in your cup — the things that make each specialty coffee unique.
Our role as a roaster
We’d love to take credit for the magic coaxed from the beans eventually labeled Cravens Coffee, but that simply wouldn’t be true. After 30 years and 100+ personal farm visits, we’re firmly convinced that the effort and complexities of coffee farming, processing (wet mills) and grading (dry mills) are where flavor is formed. Our job is to fully accentuate and reveal the farmers’ enormous and significant work. So if anyone’s a magician, it’s them.
The vintage advantage
Most modern roasting equipment is set up for production speed and connection to an app. We believe this whole approach is missing something — humans.
We’re enthusiastic fans of vintage roasters like our big, reliable Probat, which control the process and protect the natural flavor of the coffee. The cast-iron drum, multi-level gas burners and free airflow all allow us to gently roast the coffee.
At Cravens, our human roasters use their finely tuned senses of sight and sound to make batch-by-batch decisions, because the moisture content of coffee is variable. And our vintage, hand-operated roaster allows us to achieve consistency with our senses.
Four Cravens signature roasts
Every roaster has their interpretation of optimal roast levels, usually learned, passed on and then further developed. The Cravens roasts are based on traditional Northern European influences, which our co-founder Simon Thompson learned at Seattle’s Best Coffee. Today, we roast in a variety of profiles.
01 Northern European, our lightest roast
02 Vienna, our medium roast
03 Italian Roast, the lighter of our two dark roasts
04 French Roast, our darkest and deepest
