My name is Darin Ward, I have been the owner and head roaster at UPWard Coffee since 2022.

Roasting organic coffee beans has been a passion of mine since 2010 when I got my 1^st 1Lb air roaster. There’s nothing like the smell of freshly roasted coffee that is freshly ground and there’s nothing like the rich flavor fresh roasted, freshly ground beans create in the cup!

My 1Lb roaster died in 2020 and I decided to up my roasting game with the purchase of a 3.5kg machine that finally arrived in the winter of 2021.

This led me to roasting with computer data collection and roasting 1 bean/1batch size, to 5 different roast levels (light-medium-full city-dark-espresso) to eliminate variables and achieve consistency roast after roast.  I started giving away bags of beans to new patients at UPWard Orthodontics, and then folks wanted to buy more, and it has taken off from there!

Over the past 3+ years, UPWard Coffee has grown exponentially resulting in 2 successful Copper Country Jr. Hockey fundraisers, having our beans sold in multiple locations across the Keweenaw Peninsula, and most recently we have added “Big Yo”, our 15Kg gas roaster. Big Yo has increased out capacity to over 100Lbs/hour! We have recently added Organic Swiss Water Processed Decaf to our single source bean lineup.