We purchased a vintage coffee roaster in July this year. The first coffee roaster in Bridgnorth, Shropshire & one of its kind. It was imported into the UK from Holland in the 1950’s and It was used daily at Whitburn coffee house where Mr Pembro used it to create his own roasts and blends, we are going to recreate some of those blends, as the family have kindly passed on to us his secret recipe book.
The Pembro family first got in touch with me when I had just set up my business and I was selling coffee on the Bridgnorth market, it was very early days of building the business up from scratch and at that time I did not have the space, the time or the money for that project. Which I remember being a little gutted about. Amazingly I heard about them again this year through my engineer and that very same roaster was available and I was in a position to buy it! We are now so grateful that we had the chance to purchased it finally, as they know it has gone to a great home and will be fully restored to its former glory. The roaster will be used to create one off blends and speciality single origin coffee’s by ourselves, it will also be a great opportunity to train people in coffee roasting, as I used to do this professionally for a company in Exeter and Shropshire.
I am a great believer in what will be will be and another amazing thing happened when finding this roaster for the second time… At the time of viewing the roaster I had a work experience girl with me ‘Emma’ so when she went home to tell her parents about her day, her dad had told her he had brought the old grinder years ago that went with it (please see grinder pic below). The next day when Emma arrived to work she revelled in the back of the car she had brought me the old grinder! I was so over the moon and I just couldn’t believe it!! What a beautiful thing it was too!! I so cant wait to get them working and refurbished. I will keep you all posted on the progress.
