In August, part of the coffee world is talking about scrutinising every processing step: audits, reports, certifications that promise you know what ends up in the cup. At Marché de l'Abattoir the answer stands in full daylight. Open-air coffee roasting in plain sight in Brussels shows you the whole chain in a few metres, from the sack of green beans to the warm batch in your hand. You see everything with the naked eye, and that stands in for any audit.
What you see at open-air coffee roasting in plain sight in Brussels
Golden stands on the market, on Saturday and Sunday, and smokes in the open air. You watch the green bean enter the drum. You hear it crack a few steps from you, a sound the wind carries off. Then you watch it cool in the air of the day, on the tray, until you can take it home warm.
The whole journey, from sack to cup, happens in front of you, without a wall or a closed door. You can ask the origin, where the batch comes from, how long it stayed on the fire. The answer is right there, in the drum, not in a brochure.
How open-air coffee roasting in plain sight works in Brussels, step by step
Laurent reads the morning sky and adjusts the fire and the time on Golden. When the wind picks up, he moves his hand over the flame. When the air is heavy with damp, he leaves the batch a moment longer. Every decision shows on the spot, in the way the smoke and the colour of the bean change.
A closed workshop notes the same decisions in a book and shows them to the customer only at the end, through a report. Here you watch them arrive, in their order, in full daylight. The industrial black box becomes a stall you can stand around.
Open-air coffee roasting in plain sight in Brussels: the transparency you breathe
The transparency the industry writes about has the shape of a document. On the market it has the shape of a smell. The aroma of fresh roasting drifts between the stalls and says, better than a label, that the batch is from today.
In Anderlecht the gesture is familiar from the markets of old, where you bought what you saw with your eyes. You come, you stand by the drum, you follow the batch, you smell it and you leave with it, warm. Nothing hidden along the way, because the whole way is in plain sight. You find the batch of the day there, roasted under the sky.
Bring your own cup or bag from home. You watch the batch of the day roasted under the sky, in front of you, and you leave with it.
You will find us on Saturday and Sunday at Marché de l'Abattoir, exit of the Manufakture car park, Anderlecht. Read our approach and come with your own container.
Brut. Sauvage. Imprévisible.
---
