Speciality Coffee Roasters in Mijas — Freshly Roasted in Our Chocolate Factory

Most coffee you buy has been sitting in a bag for months. Roasted in a warehouse somewhere, shipped to a distributor, stacked on a shelf, and eventually ground into your cup. By the time you drink it, the best flavours are long gone.

At Mayan Monkey in Mijas Pueblo, we roast speciality-grade coffee on-site, inside our chocolate factory. The beans go from green to roasted to your cup in the same building. And we do it on a machine that most people in Spain have never seen.

The Typhoon Fluid Bed Roaster

We roast on a Typhoon fluid bed roaster — a very different machine from the traditional drum roasters you'll find in most roasteries. Instead of tumbling beans in a heated drum, a fluid bed roaster suspends them on a column of hot air. Every bean roasts evenly, from all sides, at the same time.

The result is a remarkably clean cup. Fluid bed roasting produces coffee with:

• Brighter acidity: The clean heat preserves the bean's natural fruit and floral notes that drum roasting can mask.
• More clarity: You taste the origin, not the roast. Each coffee's unique character comes through clearly.
• No scorching: Because the beans never touch a hot metal surface, there are no burnt spots or uneven development. Every bean is consistent.
• Lighter, sweeter profiles: Fluid bed roasting excels at light to medium roasts where the bean's inherent sweetness and complexity shine.

It's the same technology used by some of the world's most celebrated micro-roasters. And you can watch it happen — the roaster sits inside the factory, and the smell when a batch is roasting is extraordinary.

The Beans We Import

Speciality coffee starts with the beans. We import speciality-grade green coffee — scored 80+ on the SCA scale — from origins selected for their exceptional cup profiles. These aren't commodity beans bought on the futures market. They're traceable, carefully processed, and chosen because they taste spectacular.

Our sourcing changes with the seasons and harvests, but we look for coffees with character: bright Ethiopian naturals with blueberry and jasmine notes, clean Colombian washed lots with caramel and citrus, complex Central American beans with chocolate and stone fruit. Every origin tells a different story in the cup.

We roast in small batches to bring out each coffee's best qualities. A delicate Kenyan gets a different roast profile than a full-bodied Brazilian. The Typhoon gives us precise control over temperature and airflow, so we can develop each bean to exactly where it needs to be.

Why Freshness Matters

Coffee is a fresh product — more like bread than wine. After roasting, coffee is at its peak between 7 and 30 days. After that, the volatile compounds that create aroma and flavour start to fade. By 60 days, even the best beans taste flat.

Because we roast on-site, our coffee goes from roaster to shelf in minutes, not months. When you buy a bag from us, you know exactly when it was roasted — because it was probably roasted that week, in the room next to where you're standing.

More Than Just a Roastery

What makes us unusual is that we're not just a coffee roaster — we're a chocolate and coffee factory under one roof. We work with cacao and coffee, two crops that often grow in the same regions, at similar altitudes, and share more flavour chemistry than most people realise. (Discover the parallels in our guide to how chocolate is made from bean to bar.)

The same care we put into sourcing ethical, organic cacao goes into our coffee. The same obsession with freshness and quality. And the same belief that when you know where your food comes from and how it's made, it tastes better.

You can taste our coffee in the factory, buy beans to take home, or simply enjoy a cup while your children make chocolate in one of our workshops. It's all happening in the same place.

Visit the Roastery

We're at Plaza Virgen de la Peña 15, Mijas Pueblo — in the heart of the village. The roaster is visible from the factory floor, and if you time your visit right, you might catch a roast in progress. Open daily 10:30am – 6:00pm (until 9pm in summer).

If you care about what's in your cup, come and see where it's roasted. It's worth the trip up the hill.