Since 2021 the Bailey’s have been roasting organic coffee, find out where to purchase
From Colin Bailey, Tanbark City Roasters, connect on Facebook
In October of 2020, my wife and I decided to start a little pre-retirement business. We decided that what our community needed was a Coffee Roaster. I thought about names because that is always a great starting point and delved into the history of the area and came up with Tanbark City Roasters, Inc.
Tanbark City Roasters started its first few roasts on a basic model of roaster that can be mounted to your home gas grill. The first roasts were purely research. Trying to figure out roast times, what beans they might want to roast and how far to roast them for the right flavor profile. Truly it is a lot of fun! I (Colin) enjoy the challenge of roasting and developing the right flavor profile and Kris loves sampling the different roasts and telling me which way to go with the roast! She really does have a much finer palate than I do.
So, in March of 2021, with some knowledge under their belts, some fancy metalwork by the late Shane Weinreber and the generosity of Chelsea Burdick, they moved production to Chelsea’s Catering at 82 N Main Street Wellsville. Chelsea is the best and we worked around her schedule as much as possible to stay out from under foot. We roasted there for 9 months until we outgrew our roaster and felt as though we were starting to encroach on her space, though she never said a word to us implying that. I do miss roasting there and buying a mid-roast molasses cookie to get me through the evening.
The next step for us was to move a little closer to home. So, keeping to the Tanbark City name, we moved our business to Scio in the hills where the tanning bark was harvested to give Wellsville its 1900’s moniker.
We now roast on what some might consider a “vintage” Diedrich drum roaster. The model is an IR-7N built in the late 90’s, that can hold 7lbs of coffee for a roast. Time and knowledge taught me that coffee roasters do their best when not loaded over 80% of their maximum capacity. That means we can handle about 5.6lbs of green coffee per roast.
Light and decaf roasts yield about 85% of their original green weight, medium about 80%, Vienna about 75%, and dark about 70%. The lighter the roast is, the higher the caffeine content and the more acidic the coffee is. As the coffee is roasted darker, it gets dryer and the beans expand. That is why our Vienna and Dark Roast are only 11 and 24 oz bags versus our decaf, light and medium roasts in 12 and 32 oz bags. We ran out of room in the bag!
We roast only organic coffees. We try to do our best with fair trade certification, however, we cannot always find the best tasting coffee with this certification, for this reason we roast organic coffees with the best flavor as a priority.
Since we started, we have roasted over 2500lbs of green coffee. We are not a big supplier as our goal was to stay small and roast for our community so as not to get in over our heads. It takes about 30 minutes per roast on average, so we do not have lofty goals of competing with the big guys out there. We have yet to take a paycheck out of the business as we invest all our money back into the business to improve our equipment and buy the best coffee while keeping the cost to our customers low. (I will be honest and say we have used some of the business funds to buy molasses cookies at Chelsea’s, beers at the Brewery and some goods at From the Hart.)
So – if you are looking for a great cup of coffee, and better yet want something local, try us out. We are available at From the Hart, Wellsville Brewing Company, and Fishers Pharmacy, all located on Main Street in Wellsville. Or – buy it online at www.tanbarkcityroasters.com and feel free to contact us any time with specific requests.
