A Collective Lets Small Coffee Shops Roast Their Own Andrea Mohin/The New York Times Steve Mierisch, right, owns the Pulley Collective, a roaster in Brooklyn being used by coffee professionals like Ed Kaufmann, left, the head roaster for Joe. Usually, a coffee roaster starts small. Whether it's with an industry giant like Starbucks, or a cult company like Heart Roasters, the trajectory is the same: the roasting grows at the same pace as the company. By this standard, Joe and Ninth Street Espresso are doing it backward. The companies, which have devoted followings, are two of the most important players in New York's independent coffee scene. Joe has 10 locations (including two in Philadelphia); Ninth Street Espresso has 4. But neither roasted its own beans, choosing instead to supply the shops over the years with roasts from innovators like Counter Culture Coffee, Intelligentsia Coffee and Stumptown Coffee Roasters. As of this month, that has changed. Both Joe and Ninth Street Espresso have joined the Pulley Collective, a new coffee-roasting plant on the Brooklyn waterfront that members rent out by the half-day. It is less like a community kitchen or a woodworking cooperative than the Electric Lady Studios of coffee: a tricked-out operation that takes care of all the details. The Pulley Collective is on the ground floor of a 19th-century warehouse in Red Hook, in a 6,500-square-foot space that looks as if it could be a nightclub or a beer hall. There are two coffee roasters, a vintage Deidrich with a cast-iron drum and a new Loring SmartRoast, a technologically advanced roaster with a list price of $135,000. There is a quality-control laboratory and a cupping area. A shipping container inside the warehouse is being converted into a barista classroom. The project was dreamed up by Steve Mierisch, a boyish 37-year-old whose family has been farming coffee in Nicaragua since 1908. He worked for Intelligentsia Coffee until last year, and he established the Pulley Collective to be more than time sharing. "I wanted to create a place that will be become an incubator," said Mr. Mierisch, who sees it as a training ground for a new generation of coffee roasters. It allows entry at a fraction of the cost at every level. It makes experimentation affordable. It takes deep pockets to roast in New York. An artisanal operation might cost anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million to open in the city. A basic membership in the Pulley Collective, which includes the use of all of the equipment, is $850 a week. The reasons for joining aren't just economic. "Rather than thinking, "This is the rent," we look at this as a groundbreaking new community," said Jonathan Rubinstein, who started Joe with his sister, Gabrielle, in 2003. It's also a response to loftier expectations. Not long ago, it was exciting to find a well-made espresso in New York; today, demanding customers want to taste something unique. According to Mr. Rubinstein, it's no longer enough to order from the catalog of an established roaster and use the same coffee that everybody else buys. By roasting, Joe, Ninth Street Espresso and the other Pulley Collective members can take control of another link in the coffee-supply chain. Joe is now buying green coffee beans directly from importers and, in some cases, farmers. Ed Kaufmann, the head roaster for Joe, expects to go through more than 225,000 pounds of green coffee in the next 12 months. It's a fraction of the 2.7 million pounds that Intelligentsia roasts, and a rounding error for the industrial roasters that go through hundreds of millions of pounds a year, but it's an impressive debut. For Ninth Street Espresso and Joe, the Pulley Collective is a scaled-up roaster without any of the logistical headaches that would come with opening such a space in New York. They didn't have to secure the site, hire a contractor or worry about the duct work. For Dillon Edwards, who opened Parlor Coffee last year, the allure of the Pulley Collective is the affordable price. Parlor Coffee might be the smallest espresso bar in New York. Located inside Persons of Interest, a barbershop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the espresso machine shares a back room with a display of hair-care products. Originally a barista for Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland, Ore., Mr. Edwards moved to New York to help open the company's coffee bar at the Ace Hotel. He went to Bonanza Coffee Roasters in Berlin before returning to New York to work at Blue Bottle Coffee, where he became the lead barista. It's a path you'd expect in the restaurant industry, where line cooks move from one hotshot kitchen to another until the time is right to go out on their own. Increasingly, that's happening in coffee. Mr. Edwards, who was roasting on a small machine before joining the Pulley Collective, plans to build his own facility close to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Until then, he's taking advantage of the equipment in Red Hook. He's also taking advantage of being in the company of fellow roasters. Roasting can be a lonely business, with early mornings and long days spent standing next to a loud machine that needs to be monitored. "Being around others gives you a sense of, "We have to perform," " Mr. Edwards said. It's an energy.