Most roasteries pick a side. Drum or hot air. Tradition or innovation. Dark or light. Richman Coffee Roastery refuses the binary. Instead, the team operates two entirely different roasting machines under one roof — choosing the method that best serves each bean's potential, not the one that fits the house style.
It's an approach that takes more equipment, more skill, and more discipline. It also produces some of the cleanest, most intentional coffee we offer on Bloom Daily.
"We don't roast to add flavour. We roast to reveal it." — Richman Coffee Roastery
Two Machines, Two Philosophies
At the heart of the Richman roastery sit two very different pieces of equipment. Each is paired deliberately with the coffees that suit it best.
The Fluid Bed
- Thermal clarity. Pure hot air eliminates the scorched "metal" or over-toasty notes common in conventional drums. The result is a cleaner, more vibrant cup.
- Nordic-style development. Maximises the bean's natural sweetness and fruit acidity while ensuring the core is fully developed — no underdeveloped grassiness, no roast cover-up.
- Built for clarity. If you want to taste the soil, altitude, and varietal — this is the method that lets the origin speak.
The Drum
- Body & conduction. The drum's radiant heat builds a syrupy, full body and the deep chocolate-caramel notes that only conduction roasting delivers.
- Classic medium-dark profile. Genesis is intentionally roasted darker — built for milk drinks and heavy-bodied espresso.
- Roots and ritual. A bold, comforting cup that pays respect to the heritage of espresso culture.
Why Not Just Pick One?
Fluid bed roasters and drum roasters aren't equally good at every job. They're fundamentally different tools, and pretending otherwise produces compromised coffee.
A drum roaster relies on conduction — the heat of the metal walls transferring to the beans as they tumble. This builds body, develops Maillard sweetness, and creates the chocolate-caramel-nut profile we associate with classic espresso. But push it hard enough to reveal delicate Ethiopian florals or Kenyan blackcurrant, and you'll often pick up faint "drum notes" — a toasty or even metallic undertone that masks origin character.
A fluid bed roaster lifts the beans on a stream of pure hot air. Every bean is heated evenly, all the time. There's no conduction surface to scorch, no hot spots, no smoke trapped in the chamber. Origin character comes through with almost shocking clarity — but the same machine struggles to build the heavy, syrupy body that defines a great milk-based espresso.
Richman's answer is simple: use both. Single origins go on the fluid bed. The Genesis blend goes on the drum. The coffee always gets the machine that serves it best.
Consistency Through Data
Sensory intuition is half the craft. The other half is data. Every batch Richman roasts is logged — bean temperature, environmental temperature, rate of rise, development time, end temperature. Each roast curve is compared against the reference profile for that lot.
This is what separates a hobbyist roaster from a professional one. Anyone can roast a great batch once. Doing it consistently — bag after bag, month after month, season after season as green coffee lots evolve — requires a roast log that doesn't lie.
What this means for you: the bag you brew today should taste like the bag you brewed last month from the same lot. And when a new harvest arrives, the data-driven adjustments are subtle, deliberate, and aimed at preserving the cup you fell in love with.
The Richman Standard
Whether you're brewing a delicate V60 at home with a single-origin Ethiopian, or pulling a rich double shot of Genesis on a commercial machine in a cafe — Richman's beans are crafted for the same kind of drinker: the curious palate.
Not the drinker who wants coffee to taste the same every day forever. The drinker who wants to taste this Ethiopian Yirgacheffe with its jasmine and bergamot notes, then taste that Brazilian Cerrado with its cocoa-and-toasted-almond body, and understand that both can be brilliant in their own ways.
That's the standard. Clean. Complex. Intentional.
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