Sustainability at our Roastery
The Chimney Fire Coffee roastery is located in the peaceful Surrey Hills, where we’ve been based since 2017.
In 2022, we moved our whole company a few miles down the road to a large unit on Denbies Wine Estate, in order to accommodate our brand new 30kg roaster. Along with a purpose built production area, we have a roastery shop, tasting room, and most importantly, a roasting team who consistently produce exceptional coffee!
We are extremely passionate about sourcing, roasting and developing recipes for each and every one of our coffees. Alongside this, as an impact–focused brand and Certified B Corp, operating in an environmentally sustainable way is at the forefront of our business model.
Roasting
Our 30kg drum roaster (handbuilt in Athens by CoffeeTool) helps us minimise gas usage per kilogramme, through higher heat radiation from its cast iron body than our previous 15kg roaster.
We also have an afterburner installed at the point of exhaust. This helps remove pollutants by oxidising waste gases from roasting, alongside reducing smoke and some odours from our roastery. However, we are left with the beautiful smell of freshly roasted coffee, and on roasting days we receive many compliments about the beautiful aroma that drifts across the Denbies estate!
Quality Control
If you visit us on a roast day, you'll find it’s more technical than you may think. We use roast profiling software for each production roast - this doesn’t automate the process but provides a guide for our two roasters to ensure consistency and a great tasting coffee time after time. We are fully compliant with food safety standards within the roastery and production area, with a five-star hygiene rating.
Coffee cupping is the final quality process, and it ultimately plays a key part in helping us decide which beans and roasts to go for. It is also how we ensure consistency from roast-to-roast, with each roasted batch tasted and recorded the following morning to confirm it is as delicious as we expect it to be.
This does mean that, after a full day’s roasting of 20 batches, the next day our amazing roasting must taste 20 different coffees!
Packaging
Our roastery is single-use plastic free wherever possible, and this includes both our 250g and 1kg bags which are industrially compostable (as are our Nespresso compatible coffee pods).
We have chosen to use four basic packaging colours (blue, purple, orange, and green) to denote the type of coffee inside - house blend, single origin, decaf, and special respectively - and individual coffees are distinguished by recyclable card inserts rather than a sticker on the bag.
By using these generic bags and card inserts we significantly reduce our packaging waste, because when a coffee runs out or needs updating, all we have to do is change the card - or even just the web page behind the QR code.
To dive deeper into the nuances of different types of packaging and coffee pod choices, check out our blog Reducing Waste from Coffee Consumption.
Shipping
Whether it’s just a single bag or a monster 12kg wholesale box, all our dispatch boxes, tape, and shipping labels are plastic free and fully recyclable. For certain local café partners we also supply our beans in 10kg reusable plastic tubs, further reducing our reliance on single-use bags.
Roastery Tours & Experiences
Our popular Saturday Tours & Experiences take place in our main roastery area, and cover the full journey of your morning coffee from bean to cup!
After a welcome coffee, we’ll talk you through the process of coffee growing and production, exploring the many environmental and human factors that go into making your cup of coffee taste the way it does. We’ll also explain the skills behind how coffee is roasted.
During the session you’ll also learn about the art of brewing, preparing a V60 filter coffee together so you can get the best out of your coffee at home.
Tours & Experiences
From £15pp
📅 SELECTED SATURDAYS
📍 CHIMNEY FIRE COFFEE ROASTERY
