Our Story
A small roastery in an old mill
We're roasting on a small machine in an old mill outside of Oslo.
Grini Mølle has stood by the same stream since 1686. Grain was milled here for over two centuries. During the war, the building quietly served the resistance. Since 1946, it has belonged to people who work with their hands: upholsterers, furniture makers, craftspeople. The roastery is the latest addition to a long line.
The work fits well here. Each roast is handled in small batches, on a machine you can listen to as it runs. The producers we work with are doing patient, deliberate work on the coffee during farming. We owe them the same patience at the drum.
It's a small but dedicated operation.
A few years ago, I came in fifth place at the Swedish Brewers Cup. Which sounds extremely prestigious right up until you realize it essentially means I stood in a silent room pouring hot water over ground beans while three men in tailored leather aprons studied my wrist angle as if I were performing open-heart surgery.
But that's where I drank coffee that tastes different. Not "dark chocolate with a hint of red berries" (which, as we all know, is industry code for "it tastes like coffee, please give us your money"), but coffee that tastes like biting into a ripe nectarine in July, except hot, black, and completely different. Almost all of them were anaerobically fermented, co-fermented, or processed using methods that make traditional coffee farmers want to call the police.
Around that time, I started talking to Johan at Gringo Nordic (the same Johan who helped me pick my competition coffees). He saw the exact same thing. Fermented coffee isn't somehow "less coffee" just because it didn't undergo a traditional process. Fermented coffee is doing something else entirely and what it’s doing is fascinating to me.
"But Rasmus," I hear you objection , muttering into your screen, "shouldn't a roastery offer a wide selection so that everybody stays happy?"
Translation: Why don't you just sell a nice, safe medium-roast Colombia that my grandfather can drink without frowning?
Because other people do that much better, and because I’ve actually stopped being keen on drinking it. So I bought a coffee roaster instead, and here we are, in an old mill outside Oslo, still pouring hot water over ground beans.
- Rasmus, Founder
Follow the process
Behind-the-scenes from the roastery, coffee stories, roast days, and the coffees before they're coffee. Maybe my dog too.