Written by Dušan Matičič, head roaster at GOAT STORY

Coffee is dirty business. That's no joke. It's a mess. Brown, sticky, it will stain your clothes if you're not careful and it just flies everywhere. And you know what, that's just when you're grinding and brewing coffee.

Welcome to the next level of messy coffee. Have you ever seen the inside of a coffee roaster after a couple months of roasting?

Well ... it's an epic mess!!! When coffee is roasting, a whole lot of yucky stuff sticks to the inside of the roaster. It's no surprise, as coffee contains oils, dust, chaff and it is actually transformed from a raw organic product into a roasted "food" that is ready to consume.

OK, let's get one thing straight - a roaster needs to be cleaned after every roast day. But that's basic cleaning, which means vacuuming the chaff, wiping the whole roaster with a cloth, disinfecting the cooling tray.

Then there's something that needs to be done every few weeks, like cleaning the probes that read the temperature in various parts of the roaster.

And then there's the mother load that needs to be done every few months (we do that three times per year usually) ... a general cleaning of the roaster, which means cleaning it inside-out: cleaning the buildup on the inside walls, cleaning all the ducting. That takes some time. And it's ... well ... dirty business. But someone's got to do it.

Curious how a roaster is cleaned? here's a video of our last cleaning day (two days actually ...)