VIDA E CAFFE ROASTERY TOUR

As a daily Vida visitor it was awesome to get a peek behind-the-scenes..

Beneath their own head-office in The Boulevard in Woodstock, through a door in the parking lot is where you will find Vida’s roastery, the true heart of the whole operation. I was lucky enough to be given a tour by Gareth Maingard, the Chief Roaster, who trained under the wing of coffee aficionado Pedro Abrunhose. Have kept the photographs in order, instead of my usual randomisation to give you a feel for how the whole process works.

As I’m sure you know, coffee starts off growing on trees in some very exotic locations. The Vida beans are organically grown on a single family-owned farm in Hondurus, Fair Trade certified and are imported under the name Esterla Blend. What you may or may not know, Vida doesn’t only roast for their own stores but a few very well know South African franchises, as well as some in Europe – these however are all completely different blends. The first part of the process starts with the huge canvas bags of bean being sucked through a machine, 15kg of the correct mixtures of the beans is then placed in the white buckets. The Vida blend is top secret, or as Gareth put it ‘like the Coca-Cola recipe’ so they weren’t about to give anything away. Coffee beans have 3 layers, the first layer has already been removed when the bean was dried, the second two layers come off as ‘chaff’ – which is highly flammable, and can be seen in the 5th photo, it looks like saw dust. The roastery itself boasts a Toper Afterburner. It is the only one of its kind in the Western Cape, manufactured in Turkey and imported from Italy. ‘Since we’re not situated in an industrial area, we cannot have smoke billowing out all over the place,’ explains Gareth. ‘This machine reduces the smoke, odours and particles in roasting smoke.’ The beans are then roasted at a secret temperature for a secret amount of time..

The longer you roast the stronger, but also more bitter the flavour of the coffee. It must also be noted that decaf beans that have roasted for the same amount of time are darker in colour, due to the fact that they have been steamed before hand – which takes the caffeine outta the bean! This can clearly be seen in the 4th from last photo which has a premium blend and a decaf. The beans are then cooled before being packaged and shipped off to their destination. What impressed me most was the sheer size of the operation – they roast about 800kg of beans everyday – but also how methodical the whole process was, there are so many checks in place at each stage to ensure that the finished product is of the utmost quality.

At the roastery they also have a small testing area which they keep samples of every roast for a Vida blend for up to 3 months, so that should a client complain about the coffee it can be tested. I learn’t that a good espresso should ‘pull’ between 27 – 29 seconds, if it’s quicker that means that the beans haven’t been ground enough and the coffee will be too weak, if it’s longer it means that they beans have been ground too much and it’s taking the water longer to pass through, also making the coffee extremely strong. You can tell how fresh a batch of coffee is from the amount of crema you have at the top of an espresso which should be exactly 2oz.

What you should be excited about is that you can now purchase your Vida coffee at Pick ‘n Pay in Johannesburg, coming to Cape Town soon, with a great price point. It’s R10 cheaper than its main competitior, plus it comes with a free voucher, a saving of anywhere between R15 – R21. You may have also noticed that delicious looking delicia de chocolate, a nom nom rocky road which is currently in product development and testing, and so far only available at the Boulevard store, which happens to be the store the ‘guinea pig’ test a lot of their new products before they hit all the stores! Learnt so much about the roasting process this morning and am beyond excited to now be an MVP.. Obrigado Vida! x

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