Mary Engel needs a little extra boost of energy to help her take care of her grandchildren during the day.

She usually turns to coffee from Lawrence’s own Fresh Coffee Roastery – about three cups a day – to keep her going.

“It’s smooth,” she says. “It doesn’t taste bitter or burned.”

Engel can trace her smooth caffeine to a nondescript building close to the railroad tracks near Locust and North Seventh streets.

Inside, about 20 burlap sacks sit on the floor, each filled with green coffee beans and marked in black letters with a different country of origin: Brazil, Sumatra, Nicaragua, Kenya, Ethiopia and others.

Several times a week, Annie Lin is here roasting the beans, filling the small office with a sweet coffee aroma that seeps out into North Lawrence.

“This is something we enjoy doing,” Lin says. “It doesn’t bring us a lot of income. It’s also kind of rewarding, making stuff that people like.”

Annie Lin brews local blends of coffee in a 20-foot-by-20-foot room in north Lawrence. While Annie and her husband used to have a coffee shop, they have scaled down to roast beans for local stores and online customers.

Lin and her husband, Hungwei Lin, who are from China but have lived in the United States for 16 years, opened Fresh Coffee Roastery more than four years ago. Back then, the roastery also had a coffee shop storefront at Sixth Street and Kasold Drive.

When the coffee shop became too much of a hassle with their growing son, Sydney, who now is 7, they decided to scale back and focus on roasting and blending beans and distributing them to customers, including local grocery stores.

Now, Lin spearheads the operation, while her husband works at Hill’s Pet Nutrition.

She sells the roasted coffee beans through a Web site – www.efreshcoffee. com – and at Hy-Vee and the Community Mercantile, always delivering the coffee less than 24 hours after it’s roasted.

“Coffee is like a tea – freshness is very important,” Lin says. “We usually have it to them the next day. We roast it, pack it and it goes to the store. Sometimes it’s still warm.”

Under their own label, Annie and her husband roast their beans fresh. The blends are sold at grocery stores and online at www.efreshcoffee.com.

Lin buys her coffee beans in 150-pound bags from a distributor who deals with coffee farmers around the world. She buys both regular coffee and the organic, free-trade variety. Most beans cost in the ballpark of $2 a pound.

Different beans naturally have different characteristics and flavors, depending on the climate in which they were grown. But she works hard to hone the correct roasting techniques, flavors and blends to complement the beans.

“We do a lot of experimenting,” she says.

Most of the beans – up to 5 pounds at a time- are put in a special coffee roaster for around 12 minutes at 415 to 465 degrees.

Fresh Coffee Roastery offers about 15 varieties of nonflavored coffee and 26 varieties of flavored coffees. The company also makes Chinese teas.

The coffees sell on the Fresh Coffee Roastery Web site for $7.25 to $9.45 a pound, though prices in the store differ.

Lin, who is a former TV anchor in China, says she doesn’t have a favorite type of coffee.

“I switch around,” she says. “If I drink one thing all the time, I get tired of it.”

Lin says she doesn’t have specific plans for the business. But with Sydney’s karate and piano lessons, and with his baseball and soccer practices and games, she doesn’t have plans for rapid expansion.

One-hundred pound bags of green coffee beans dot the floor where Annie Lin roasts blends to be sold in Lawrence stores. They're also available online at www.efreshcoffee.com

She says there may be an advantage to staying small.

“If we had a bigger business, it would be a longer time for processing,” she says. “I want to expand, but I also don’t want to do too much.”

Engel, who has been buying Fresh Coffee Roastery varieties for several years, says the Rainforest blend and Costa Rican Tarrazu – both medium blends – are her favorites.

She calls Lin about once a month for coffee, and she often stops in the grocery store for more.

“I’m a loyal customer,” she says. “And I’ll keep being a loyal customer as long as they’re around, or I’m around.”