Meet Iwan, a Coffee Head

Written by Charlie Price

Meet Iwan, a Coffee Head

Iwan from Sioptec joined us at our forth instalment of First Camp. I recently paid him a visit in his new roastery for a chat.

Charlie: Hi Iwan, do you want to just give us an introduction to Sioptec, Siopshop and your relationship with coffee?

Iwan: Yeah! We're just sat in Sioptec, which is in a really cool former coach house in Ardwick, Manchester. Sioptec is a roastery coming from us… Siopshop. For years we've been highlighting coffee from other roasteries that we love, and are now excited at the opportunity of highlighting our own. We have the café (Siopshop), which has always been quite hands-on, very lo-fi, DIY. We try to do everything ourselves in-house, but we can't grow coffee in this country, though we can certainly toast it and make it brown, ready to serve. Sioptec affords us the ability to offer up our own expression of coffee, what we enjoy from a cup, and create more tangible bonds at origin for us to discuss with our customers.

Charlie: You joined us at First Camp this year, for the people that didn't attend maybe give them a quick rundown of what you did and how you found the experience.

Iwan: Yeah, Charlie from Outsiders asked me if I wanted to come and make some coffee and if I could do some cowboy roasting, and I said yeah, 100%. The core component when roasting is about energy input, whether that's conduction or convection, whether primitively in a pan or in front of a primo machine. At the start of the workshop I outlined the roasting fundamentals, stages to look out for and milestones in the roast we wanted to achieve. I was elated when what I had prefaced to all before starting the roast transpired, punched the air at one point. I think if I were to do it again, I would try to achieve greater consistency in the roasts. Perhaps I can convince Snow Peak to allow me a few drill holes and install some temperature probes to the skillet. The cast iron was perfect as it had great thermal mass, ideal. We cupped the coffee the next day, and it was far, far from competition level, but with their newfound context we were able to discuss why it cupped as it did.
It was great because there were a lot of interested people who were big into their coffee, lots of fellow coffee dweebs dweebing out with me in the morning when I was on the brew with Lewis Maillardet (Sey/Mavam). There is definitely an overlap between outdoorsy-ness and coffee. A good opportunity to talk about the coffee and producer, Edinson Argote. It was a washed thermal shock orange Bourbon from the Quebreditas Farm in Colombia. We only had a small amount, and it is a very bougie brew to come from a tent.

Charlie: You're from Wales so I guess you know more than most how lucky we were with the weather.

Iwan: I think I'd be lying to you if I said it was always sunny in North Wales. It rains a lot, being in the shadow of the Wyddfa (Snowdon). I'm from Dolgellau, which is a bit south of where First Camp was. If you consider the Llyn Peninsula, where First Camp is, the arm of Wales, Dolgellau is the nipple. My family are all first-language speakers. I will advocate for the language and country any chance I get. It was super cool to be on the peninsula and see other people enjoy the natural beauty of Wales. North Wales is a two-hour drive away from Manchester and it was so scenic, wasn't it? It was beautiful, memorable. Berts (the campsite we stay at for First Camp) have done an amazing job of keeping the area wild but also making it feel really organised and hospitable. When we showed up we didn't know where we were and didn't know who to ask, but I felt strangely comfortable just asking whoever was there, because I knew we were all here for the same purpose. We made our way down to the beach and people were hanging out and chatting, knocking back sake. It felt very cool, when you were walking around the site you would always say hello to the people you passed, it was just immediately very comfortable.

Charlie: What does the future hold for Sioptec/shop?

Iwan: We want to build a space that we can make things in and be creative, you can see we have four 3D printers here and a lot of other tools. We want to be making stuff! Whether that's coffee or something else fun. We've got a seven-kilo Loring roaster, which is one of the smallest, it helps us focus on the small details and the macro. We hope to expand our outlets this year, which builds on the above — and most importantly, more cool events like First Camp.

Find Iwan, Sioptec and Siopshop at siopshop.co and on Instagram at @siop.tec and @siopshop.

Image credits: @violetxanthephotos, Iwan Roberts and Charlie Price