I · II The roastery
Most roasters have one front door. Republica has two — and a drum that never quite belongs to either.
Drive the Fraser Valley long enough and you start to notice the same bags turning up on different shelves. A cafe on Glover Road in Fort Langley. A counter on 176 Street in Cloverdale. The same beans, dated the same week, roasted in the same small batches off the same aging website that's never quite kept up with the coffee.
That's Republica: a two-location roaster splitting wholesale and retail across one roastery. Green beans come in by the sack and rest. Small batches go into the drum. What comes out gets bagged for the shelf, pulled as espresso over two counters, and shipped by the case to the kitchens down the road.
The drum
It starts green.
Raw, unroasted beans don't look like much — pale, grassy, dense. They get cupped and cleared, then loaded into the drum in small batches and watched by ear and by colour: the first crack, the smell of it turning, the development held right where it wants to be before it comes out to rest.
