Roaster at Sisters Coffee | Roasters, Roasting, Roast

Roaster | Founder Winfield Durham & The Probat Roaster

Established in 1989, Sisters Coffee has a long and intimate story. Our "Mountain Roasted" coffee is roasted at 3,200 ft., near the base of the Cascade Mountain range in Sisters, OR. We roast at this high altitude and in small batches to ensure an excellent cup of coffee. We take pride in the ability to ship and deliver a newly created product to our retail, wholesale, and mail order customers each day.

“I started out roasting, packaging, and delivering myself,” he says, nostalgically thinking back to when he first opened Sisters Coffee Co. over two decades ago with an L 5 (5 kilograms, about 11 pounds) Probat. “I quickly upgraded to an L 12 as demand grew... and now we have an L 25.”

In the old days, we did everything out of a 600 sq. ft. shop. From roasting to packing to serving espresso, the old shop was a quaint and vintage outpost for coffee. Smoke came out of a small chimney to give Sisters a constant aroma of fresh roasted coffee. “And I didn’t even charge for that,” Winfield says with grin. Often, if it was a dark roast, smoke filled the shop as well.

The current roasting site built in 2005, virtually overlaps the old shop. It has more space and the smoke is processed through an afterburner. While some aspects of Sisters Coffee have transformed over the years, the roastery, warehouse and coffee shop are still joined in the same building. (More photos below)

Press | Sisters Coffee Co. 20th Anniversary

Coffee Company Grew from Humble "Grounds"
Sisters Coffee Company's 20th Anniversary
By Kimberly Bowker / The Bulletin

(08/18/09 - Sisters, OR) The aroma of roasted coffee permeates the interior of Sisters Coffee Co. as the drone of chatting customers mixes with the sound of espresso machines. Winfield Durham, 56, and his wife, Joy, 52, founded the coffee-roasting business 20 years ago in Sisters. It started in a little cabin on Hood Avenue where the current building, which opened in 2005, now stands. “We are a destination and this is where people come to meet,” Winfield Durham said about the coffee shop. “We wanted to make it a place where people could come and collect their thoughts. Full article...

Probat Coffee Roaster | Two Tons of Coffee Love

The Probat [pron' pro-bought] is a precision wonder, an industry leader and built for us in Germany. It allows us to custom roast on-site to our standards and for the shortest time and distance between a fresh roast and your first sip.

Probat (www.probatburns.com) began in 1886 under the name Emmericher Maschinenfabrik & EisengieBerei company in Germany. There they began producing and perfecting coffee roasters and to this day they are on the forefront of innovation and excellence. They are like the BMW of the coffee world.

Roaster | The Pour

The pour must happen at the precise moment the beans are perfected. Even a few seconds on either side can alter the flavor of the beans.

Roaster | The Cooling Tray

This piece of the roaster must be quick and efficient to cool the beans. The beans come out at about 400 degrees and will continue to roast after they are been dumped unless the cooling tray can quickly cool them.

Some roasters use water to cool the beans off quickly, but we feel like that damages the beans too much to be worth a quick cool.

Roaster | The Roast

The finished product!

The roast is finished and the beans are perfected. A roast generally takes anywhere from 10-15 minutes to complete with a 20 second window to dump the beans at their perfect state. During the roasting process the beans can almost double in size and they lose about 20% of their weight. It's estimated that there are over 2,000 different chemical substances in coffee, and many chemical reaction happen when the intense heat is applied.

Sisters Coffee's roaster is one of the Probat Roasters, commercial machine for roasting beans for dark, french, medium, light, espresso and other bean roast specialties. Enjoy our roast at home or work.

800.524.5282 | 541.549.0527 | SISTERS, OREGON 97759 | CONTACT US | LOCATIONS