meet the roaster
Rene Macauley
Head Roaster, People’s Coffee A self-described ‘Mr Fix it’, Rene Macaulay from People’s Coffee, grew up in Miramar, Wellington skateboarding and playing as many different instruments as possible in local bands. The head roaster spent a year in India in 2004 working in a drug rehabilitation ashram, he makes jewellery, tattoos his own legs, and has never had a professional haircut. But today we’re here to talk about coffee.
“In the mid-2000s, on occasion, I would visit the owner of Peoples coffee, Matt Lamason, in my lunch break. While I did drink coffee, the drink on its own wasn’t all that interesting to me, I was more interested in the whole process and big picture of coffee,” Macaulay explained. “I love the roasting machine and started roasting coffee at home, not because I thought I’d do a better job, but because I just enjoy the process. On one of my visits with Matt he said he was planning a trip to Colombia and was explaining that he needed to train someone to roast while he was away - we realised I could be that person.” Macaulay was drawn to the new job prospect; he was very interested in the operation and maintenance of the large machines as well as the sensory
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aspect which gets into the deep end of tasting and evaluating coffee. “Also, Peoples Coffee was an ethical business which, at its core, was trying to change the world by intentionally working with marginalised producers, which I found super interesting.” The job of a production roaster is perhaps different to what people think, Macaulay often gets asked if he is experimenting all day to find new flavours like an artist might experiment with colour. The golden rule in coffee is consistency, however, not art or magic or smoke and mirrors. “We now use computers to monitor the roasting which means we visually can track a roast and compare it to the intended profile to replicate it as perfectly as possible. So, each day I am trying hard to do exactly the same thing, as if I was a machine so each respective roast tastes the same.” Air pressure, temperature, humidity, processing method and the altitude the coffee was grown at are some of the variables in roasting one must manage to achieve a consistent flavour. It takes some time to learn how to evaluate coffee, finding the right vocabulary can be hard, and understanding how to pick the negative and positive attributes of coffee is a learning journey. The industry standard of evaluation is called cupping. It is a form of brewing coffee which eliminates most variables which change flavours. By immersion brewing at a fixed ratio 1:16 with just water and boiling coffee in a cup, it produces a predictable flavour every time. This is the method People’s use to taste coffee to see how a roast or a coffee is performing. Macaulay has been involved with
New Zealand’s coffee association and roasters guild for many years and was the chair of the roaster’s guild for three years (some time ago). During this time, he created many events which ran nationwide and hosted many events where he shared his experience and industry knowledge with his own competitors throughout the country. “New Zealand has some amazing people working in coffee, I had some great times getting to know various people in the industry.” Like many of us, Macaulay finds coffee a little hard on the stomach and so begins his day with a decaf, oat milk flat white, in fact, this roaster highly recommends not starting the day with caffeine – you read that right! “Allow your body to naturally wake up unassisted and then have coffee a couple of hours after you wake,” advised Macaulay. “I strongly dislike coffee snobbery and think decaf is great. I think ‘death before decaf ’ is so childish, imagine someone who just enjoys coffee for its taste and cafe experience, as opposed to someone who just uses it as a drug and can’t function without it!” Because Macaulay starts each day with a decaf, he makes sure People’s decaf tastes great. “Currently we are using a Honduras water processed decaf which is beautiful, and I roast it for both filter and espresso to support all the noncaffeinated coffee lovers out there.” Ethiopian coffees (and most African coffees for that matter) have been a favourite of Macaulay’s from the beginning as they all have such unique and distinct flavours, however, naturally processed coffees have the most potential interest for him. “After visiting Rwanda and
learning about its recent history and experiencing what is happening there now, coffee from the woman’s Kopakama co-operative is the closest to my heart. The people of Rwanda in the last 25 years have had their identities and cultures tampered with and have lived through un-imaginable times, however their lives now have undergone true restoration.” While he loves roasting, after 14 years, it is the travel to meet the producers and see how the trade impacts their life that it the most inspiring part of the job for Macaulay. “I have been traveling to the producing countries for 12 years, visited 10 producing countries, and some co-ops I have visited four or five times over the years. We don’t travel out of fear or to control the process, but because we are interested in documenting who, how and why, and while we do post this to social media, we are motivated to sell their coffee and tell their story for their benefit, not just our story to build our brand.” Peoples Coffee has always used coffee bought with fair trade contracts and have been 100% organic from the beginning. Part of the fair-trade contracts which buy the coffee they use have an amount of money per kg set aside from the payment to the farmer, this is called the social premium. With the fair trade social premium system Macaulay has seen first-hand the things that can be achieved which have an ongoing impact on many people. Heath clinics, woman’s programs, food security programs, seed and bean banks, midwife training, home gardening programs, income diversification programs, roads, bridges, schools, buildings, all coffee infrastructure, training, access to social services, financial literacy training, banks … the list goes on of programs running because of this trade. “Our goal is to have long term trade relationships with these co-ops, so it is important we choose co-ops who are able to succeed.” It would appear that this skateboarding, jewlerry making, instrument playing roaster has fallen into a deep passion when it comes to People’s Coffee, and don’t forget his sage advice: “If you are a coffee fan, try to not start the day with coffee, if you can wait 1 -2 hours after waking your life will be much better, coffee will be a boost not a requirement to be alive.”
