As our subscribers already know, Canada has an abundance of specialty coffee roasters to offer across the nation. But, we’ll never say “no” to having another join the roster!
Introducing: September Coffee Co., founded by Kyle and Natasha Rowsell. September is a micro roastery based in Ottawa, Canada with a paramount goal of working with small producers and farmers to share their finest coffees with the community.
]]>Toronto may boast many coffee shops across the city, but have you ever heard of a cafe that was also a bakery and a chocolate factory? Well, look no further, as The Upper Beaches area is now home to the much-anticipated brick and mortar of Bakerrae x Chachalate!
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Seth Taylor: Coffee by Design is a one-person operation, and the owner, Seth Taylor, is roasting up some seriously incredible coffees. We chatted with Taylor to learn more about his roasting philosophy and what has inspired him.
How did you first get into coffee?
I lived in Victoria, BC, and my wife worked at a cafe. The cafe had a new owner, and they started experimenting with roasting. They needed help after hours just bagging coffee, so I went in the evenings to help out, and then the next thing I knew, they started a full-on coffee company: Fernwood Coffee. I was the first and only employee for the first year they were open, and I just fell in love with coffee. After that, we moved to England briefly, and I integrated into the coffee community there. I judged competitions, got to know different coffees and roasters, and learned a lot.
How does the specialty coffee scene in England differ from that in Canada?
The calibre of coffee is much higher in England. They’re a little more detail-oriented, and they’ve moved on to trends quickly, while Canada takes longer to adopt them. When I was in London—this would have been about ten years ago—every bar had scales and was weighing shots. You would not have seen that in Canada yet. It was a bit more elevated. I think sometimes it’s harder to find good coffee in Canada.
Did this experience inform your approach to roasting?
Definitely! They were on to lighter roasting a little sooner than Canada, too, and I would say in Canada, we’re still not really into light roasts. The market in Canada is more focused on medium, darker roasts.
How would you define your roasting philosophy?
For me, the beans are really the key. I want to impact them in the most positive way possible, with as little negative impact as possible. I think that as a roaster, it’s very easy to modify the kind of flavour profile of the coffee within the confines of the bean itself. For me, the trick to roasting is to do that as little as possible. I want to try to let the flavours inherent within the bean come forward. So, I do as light of a roast as possible without tasting underdeveloped.
What are you excited about in specialty coffee right now?
I’m really excited about all the interest in extremely high-end quality coffee. I feel like coffee quality has just been getting exponentially better in the last five years. That is partially why I don’t do any blends or anything like that.
]]>Lee Knuttila, Owner of Quietly Coffee, began his coffee journey as a barista at Sam James Coffee Bar in Toronto. During this time, he was completing his Ph.D. at York University, where he wrote his dissertation titled: “Trolling Aesthetics: the Lulz as Creative Practice”. We chatted with Knuttila to learn about the philosophers that have inspired him and how he hopes to see specialty coffee evolve.
- How has your academic background, specifically your work looking at the internet, informed your online presence as a business and your approach to social media?
My Ph.D. research mostly focused on the tensions between anonymity and the rise of social media, which does not scream ‘how to roast coffee’. However, there are some connections!
The scaling of social media has led to a much more uniform online experience in which content is tailored to specific algorithmic trends. Granted, the information (or misinformation) varies within communities, but the overarching culture of feeds, playlists, reaction videos, and so on will focus on the viral and, by extension, adopt a homogeneity or sameness. As much as these platforms rely on narratives of facilitating diverse voices, divergent opinions, or dynamic conversations, an algorithm which amplifies the already popular (economies of likes, influencers, playlists, views, etc.) means that we end up with very similar feeds and a closed online experience.
So coffee? I think the big dream of the third wave was to do away with sameness. By moving away from massive brokers who would collect and amalgamate crops and massive companies who would all roast dark, small-scale producers connected to roasters and cafes who wanted to find the unique and interesting sensory elements inherent in fresh crop coffee (and of course get paid for their intense labour). Rather than burning every batch into a similar charred state, we get a vivid set of fruit, berry, or cooked sugar notes that reflect the variety of plant, the conditions of growth, and the producer’s crucial choices in processing. An open experience built against sensory sameness.
However, as with most counterculture movements in late capitalism, there is also an increasing ‘sameness’ across the coffee landscape. Shops stock bags from the same small set of large roasters, roasters source from a small pool of producers, producers rely on limited ‘innovative’ processing approaches, and so on. The result is not an ever-expanding exploration of the unique, but rather a limited sense of specific roast styles, ‘funky’ processes, and name brand farms that constitute a ‘good’ aka high-scoring cup. Like an algorithm wholly focused on the popular, there is a danger of losing out on the surprising, individual, challenging, and beautiful possibilities in the cup…
- What do you hope to see change or evolve in specialty coffee?
I hope to see the ‘networks of coffee’ put more energy into amplifying the voice of producers. Too often farmers and cooperatives are treated like static points in which coffee is extracted and then ‘unlocked’ by the roaster and brewer. Moreover, when we do talk about producers, it's often within narratives of either oppression or conquering adversity. Conversations about the farm’s values, interests, aims, actions, and opinions open a much more interesting discussion and do not diminish agency within the network.
- As a roaster, how do you work to showcase the uniqueness of each coffee?
Showcasing the unique is always the goal of building a roast profile. Rather than arbitrarily ending roasts using time, percentages, or degree markers, I always go to the cupping table to consider taste! I ask how much sweetness, bitterness, and sourness are in the cup, so that I can build out the flavour impressions. For example, I can isolate a sour-bitter that has a citric quality, or a sweet-sour that exudes some stone-fruit notes, or a bitter cocoa-like aromatic that really heightens the cups overall perceived sweetness.
Increasingly, the biggest strategy at Quietly is to bring in the same producers harvest after harvest. The benefit is two-fold: first, it adds stability in a volatile market if producers know they have a guaranteed buyer. Second, it allows shops and home brewers to develop long-term connections to specific farms and cooperatives. Returning favourites perfectly foster both the unique and the familiar, as you can taste the small changes in terroir and approach over time.
- You often quote philosophers or other writers in your blog posts to help illustrate ideas surrounding coffee. Is there one philosopher or idea that has helped you form your approach to coffee? Or is there one you are currently interested in or inspired by?
A lot of my coffee friends give me a very reasonable hard time about the philosophy side of the blog, but I always find inspiration in my bookshelf! If there is one philosopher that continues to guide my choices at Quietly, it would likely be Bruno Latour. His simple idea is that individual actions are always occurring within a much broader set of collective actions, and by extension, we are entwined in ‘alliances’ with our networks of people and things. The logic follows that we are responsible for our networks. As much as we want to say we are making ethical choices by sourcing coffee from farm X or Y, the rest of the people and things in the network matter. How are we shipping it? Where do our bags or boxes come from? Do we have benefits for our employees? The questions are endless and they are the ones that keep me up and night (and writing obtuse blog posts).
]]>Disnel Ramirez has worked with Semilla Coffee importers for the past two years, but his extended family has been working with the importing company since 2019. At this time, only two of the 800 growers in their area were processing their coffee for the specialty market. The others continued to transport their coffee to the city of Comayagua to be sold on the local market.
One of the movements towards specialty coffee in the community came when Jesus Galeas married into the Ramirez family. Galeas was an experienced IHCAFE (Instituto Hondureño del Café) field technician. He saw the potential in the family’s farms and became a motivating force for other farmers in the area to begin processing their coffee for the specialty market. He worked closely with Ramirez to help improve farming practices and post-harvest processing.
Disnel’s father, Clementino Ramirez, was one of the original coffee growers in the area. Clementino’s brother, Antonio, is locally considered to be the father of coffee growing in the region. He was the first to begin cultivating Typica and Bourbon after finding them growing wild on his land in the 1970s.
Now 29, Disnel has been working alongside his father since he was a child and was given his own plot of land when he was 18.
When the Ramirez family began selling specialty, their coffee was not purchased at a differentiated price. There needed to be more than a slight increase in profit to cover the farming costs. Until late last year, much of their coffee was being left behind and sold on the local market.
To help rectify this situation, Semilla has purchased all the coffee produced by the Ramirez family. Semilla plans to continue doing this while working to support new growers in the region to enter the specialty market. Disnel and his mother, Celia, recently purchased more land to increase their production. In 2020, Clementino made a difficult decision to migrate to the United States but is returning this year in hopes of an improved situation.
Disnel shared more about his experience with coffee: “Coffee is very important to us as a family, we’ve had to take on loans in order to continue forward, but now with our coffee selling as specialty we’re able to work better and receive a just price for our coffee. My goal is to continue with this specialty market connection because it gives us the opportunity to achieve our personal dreams like finally being able to have my own house and to keep my areas of the farm in good condition and to support my son in his studies.”
We have all been wowed when our barista hands us a latte adorned with a perfectly poured rosetta or, even more impressive, a true-to-life tulip on a cortado—it almost feels like a crime to drink it. I have some great news: some latte art is not as complicated as it looks. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you pour a heart like a pro!
Texture, Texture, Texture
The most important thing when it comes to pouring latte art is the texture of the milk. If the milk is too thick, the heart will pour like a thick blob, and if it’s too thin, it will melt away. You want to create microfoam that holds the shape of your art.
How do I get perfect texture?
A Swift and Controlled Pour
You are working with the flowing milk to help it drift and appear into place. Hold your cup at an angle, and slowly pour some milk from higher up (about 3-4 inches away). Once you’ve reached about halfway, bring the spout close to the surface, and you should see the white microfoam emerge. Pouring close allows for the microfoam to sit on top of the surface of the drink.
No, you shouldn’t cry over spilt milk, but you don’t want to waste too much, either. To practice your microfoam skills, fill your milk pitcher to where you usually would with cold water, and add a drop of dish soap to steam it with the steps above. The mixture will foam similarly to how milk does, with a much smaller ecological footprint (warning: this mixture gets hot very quickly!)
]]>Hailing from Squamish, British Columbia is Counterpart Coffee. Run by Emily Lehnen and Tim Knutton, this two-person roastery is a staple in the Canadian specialty coffee scene. We caught up with Lehnen to learn more about how they started and their new roaster!
- What is the origin story of Counterpart Coffee?
When we moved to Squamish, we were both working for ourselves. I was a woodworker, and Tim was doing safety consulting. Tim was just roasting coffee from home, but we were both passionate about coffee and wanted to find something we could do based out of Squamish. So we decided to start a little business of it. There wasn’t anyone else roasting out of Squamish proper at the time, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to give local businesses the option to buy locally roasted coffee.
- What is the specialty coffee scene like in Squamish?
Squamish has a great specialty coffee scene, especially considering the town’s size. Traditionally, with small towns that used to be more industry-based, you would expect fewer coffee nerds, but Squamish has a lot of coffee nerds. We have a following of people who are really stoked to have a roaster roasting light roasts and unique coffees and having different options. You have been involved in the Mataquescuintla project for a long time. How does that align with your green-sourcing ethos?
That is a really important project for us and part of our menu. We have been buying from them for five years. Generally, we source as much as we can through direct relationships with our imports. We try to work with Canadian importers and make commitments with them that once we start buying from a producer, we will do our best to continue buying from them year after year. That way, the importers have that security and can pass that on to producers as well.
- What are your plans for the future?
We just upgraded our roaster this summer. We are roasting on a Loring now, and we are loving that. Dialing it all in has been fun, and getting to know it as a machine. It has improved our roasting quite a bit. We want to grow the company at a reasonable and steady rate so we can continue to share the coffees we love with everyone.
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Nariño is a province located in southwestern Colombia bordering Ecuador and is known to be a land of extremes. It has been said that the heart of Colombian coffee sits on the mountains of Nariño, and this especially mountainous region does not disappoint.
Let’s explore the five things that make this place a mecca centre for delicious brew!
The most obvious of them all, Nariño is home to towering elevations that cultivate super tasty coffee. The reason for this? Higher altitudes mean cooler temps, allowing the bean to mature at a slower rate. With an average temperature of 11 degrees celsius, you know these beans are taking their sweet time to achieve maximum sweetness!
Nariño gets an average of 84 inches of precipitation annually, (for comparison, Toronto only gets around 33 inches!), which means these beans are getting plenty of nourishment. Coffee thrives in a range of 60-90 inches of annual rainfall, meaning Nariño has hit the sweet spot with this.
The region is home to twelve volcanoes, some of which are still active today! One usually doesn’t associate literal erupting magma with creating the perfect growing conditions for coffee, but volcanoes actually help curate the perfect environment to cultivate delicious brew.
Volcanoes produce volcanic soil, also known as Andisols, which create perfect conditions for coffee growth. Andisols are a mixture of volcanic particles (ash) and rocky fragments that are ejected from a volcano during an eruption. Over time, this breaks down to produce fertile and productive topsoil. Volcanic soil has a low density and a stable, yet porous structure, which allows it to retain water effectively. This porous soil also makes it highly permeable, letting plant roots grow deep and drain easily, and prevents the roots from getting too wet and rotting.
Andisols are high in nutrients, which is vital for coffee growth. For example, potassium levels aid cherry and bean formation as well as sugar and citric acid content. Calcium is vital to root and leaf development, which affects how quickly the fruit ripens, and boron can significantly improve crop yield. Studies have shown that coffee grown in phosphorus and potassium-rich soil tends to be more complex in aroma, flavour, and acidity. This, combined with the altitude and climate of Nariño, spells out a recipe for a delicious brew with complexity and nuance.
]]>For most of the country’s coffee-growing history, Uganda has largely been an exporter of Robusta coffee, the slightly more caffeinated but much more bitter cousin of the Arabica coffee plant, which is by far the most common plant grown for specialty coffee beans. Though Arabica coffee has finally begun to take hold in the region and even thrive in recent years, Robusta plants still dominate farms, outnumbering the more delicate plants four to one across the whole country.
Originally introduced in the early 20th century, Arabica coffee struggled to take hold as disease ravaged the crops early on. The native and undomesticated Robusta, heartier and more resistant to disease, slowly began to dominate the country as smallholder farmers realized its potential through the 1910s and into the 1920s. Uganda saw its biggest economic coffee boom in the mid-1970s. When a massive frost destroyed a huge Brazillian crop, buyers had a much higher demand for coffee from the rest of the world—and Uganda farmers realized its potential through the 1910s and into the 1920s.
Uganda saw its biggest economic coffee boom in the mid-1970s. When a massive frost destroyed a huge Brazillian crop, buyers had a much higher demand for coffee from the rest of the world—and Uganda had the supply to meet it. Coffee became the most valuable export and kept the country’s economy flowing for years after, only faltering when global coffee prices crashed in 1987.
In the years just before the crash, Arabica plants were beginning to be re-introduced to the country on a larger scale, as modern agricultural techniques were able to better protect the delicate plant from harsher environments and stave off diseases. This was also the time when farmers began to realize the ideal climates on the east and west borders of the country, where Arabica could thrive at higher altitudes amongst other crops and under shady trees. Though still not grown nearly on the same scale as Robusta, Arabica production in Uganda has grown steadily for the past 40 years. As its production has improved, so too has its reputation, quality and appeal.
In Uganda, the processing method most commonly used in Arabica coffee production is split fairly evenly in an east/west divide. Near the Mount Elgon volcano in the east, coffee largely undergoes a washed process, while coffee grown near the Rwenzori Mountains in the west is processed naturally. The distinction means that coffees grown in the east will usually be smoother, cleaner and have a more prominent acidity, while coffees grown in the west lean towards heavy fruit notes, bigger bodies and chocolate flavours.
]]>Ben Put, Co-Owner of Monogram Coffee, has been crowned Canadian National Barista Champion six times. We chatted with Put to learn about what it takes to be a six-time champion and if he plans to compete again.
- What was your vision when you decided to open Monogram?
I think what has kept us in specialty coffee is the sort of wonder side of coffee. What we mean by that is when you taste something and you experience coffee in a way that makes you reconsider coffee and dive in. Our big thing is to share that excitement for exciting coffees but also realize that coffee has a connection to fond memories, whether childhood memories or just the comforting side of coffee. We want to cultivate both experiences.
- What first got you interested in competing?
My first experience with competition was when Phil, the Co-Owner of Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters, competed. I can’t even say I was his coach. I was just a glorified dishwasher, but they were nice enough to call me the coach. But seeing him compete and his process was inspiring. I started to compete the year after that, and for the next few years. It sort of became, I would say, a healthy obsession, but an obsession on how to make coffee better.
- What is your process for preparing for a competition like?
I have a philosophy that you should never stop competing. So, 24/7, 365, I’m always thinking about competition. The first thing you need to consider is what you want to discuss. You can cover anything you want as long as it is related to coffee. And so I’m always looking for any new ideas.
- What was a memorable performance for you?
The thing that I’m most known for is freeze-distilled milk. That is where you are freezing milk and then slowly thawing it so it is distilled. During that thawing process, the sugars and salts will melt first, so you end up with a much sweeter milk. This technique has been adopted almost globally.
- Will you be competing again next year?
This year was going to be my last year. I’ve competed for a really long time. And I think everyone has a shelf life before they’re too old. But after what happened on stage this year... I haven’t talked about it too much, but I had three out of four pieces of my equipment malfunction in the last round I competed in. And so it’s sort of a weird way to go out. So I’m looking at competing again just to make sure if I’m going to retire, I’d love to retire on a set where things sort of went the way I wanted them to.
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Phil Robertson and Sebastian Sztabzyb met in 1996 at the University of Calgary. They were both studying engineering when they were paired up as lab partners and bonded over a mutual love of fine food and wine.
In 2002, they developed an interest in espresso and when Phil inherited David Schomer's book Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques, the duo dove deep into the science behind pulling a perfect shot.
Sztabzyb's kitchen served as a makeshift tasting lab, but the pair wanted to taste the coffee they had been reading about. They took a road trip to Seattle to visit Vivace, David Schomer's small cafe and roastery. After driving from Calgary to Seattle through a March snowstorm, they ordered a cappuccino and an espresso.
"Those drinks, combined with the relaxed vibe and the tattooed yet knowledgeable baristas, were what finally brought us to the realization that we needed to open a place of our own in Calgary," Robertson explained.
Since then, Robertson and Sztabzyb have opened nine locations throughout Calgary and have become synonymous with specialty coffee in Canada. We speak to many roasters, who often tell us that the first coffee that got them interested in specialty coffee was one they tried from Phil & Sebastian.
Despite their success, the duo are far from done with their single-minded pursuit of a better cup of coffee.
"It would be really boring to be mediocre or to be finished in our quest for making great coffee. It gets me out of bed, knowing it's a long way to go. We have tasted glimpses of near perfection - the question is, how do we get it to be consistently great?" Sztabzyb explained.
The pursuit of perfection. That would be a daunting task for most folks; however, Phil and Sebastian aren't like most people. Before the road trip to Seattle, they had a comfortable, well-paying job at an engineering firm that any new graduate could be proud of. But that wasn't for them. So, the ambitious coffee-loving pair left one industry and went head first into another.
"The motivation was in building something and doing something interesting & inspiring as opposed to sitting in front of a computer all day writing code, never seeing the light of day. For us, coffee was an absolute fascination and intense hobby compared to the "going nowhere" feeling we were experiencing day-to-day," Sztabzyb furthered.
Phil & Sebastian work closely with many of the farmers they source from. From visiting the farms and developing long-standing relationships with producers, they aim to go beyond direct trade with their partners.
All their coffees are carefully sourced and sustainably compensated to ensure producers are able to produce high-quality coffee. From farm to roasting, they work to realize the potential of the coffee and make good coffee extraordinary. They always feature coffees in season and sustainably sourced.
"In meeting the farmers, we hope to discover that they, too, have a shared vision with us — an interest in improvement and an appreciation for the work it takes to make it happen. That, we would say, is the most important quality," Sztabzyb shared.
Phil & Sebastian break their coffee profiles down into three main categories:
R3 - These coffees are chocolatey and conformable. They are the classic everyday crowd-pleasers.
R2 - These coffees are approachable and nuanced. They are delicate and thought-provoking.
R1 - These coffees are exotic and fruity. They have vibrant and inspiring flavours.
Their menu rotates seasonally to feature single-origin coffees. But, in their R1 category, they have consistent coffee profiles. These coffees are single-origin as well, and their components change seasonally, but their profile remains the same. Because of their long relationships with producers, you will often see coffees returning each year in addition to new offers.
This coffee is their take on a classic cup.
Tasting notes: sweet, chocolaty and nutty
This coffee is their take on a dark roast– what a dark roast should be.
Tasting notes: cocoa, caramel and nuts
This coffee is their version of a dark roast espresso.
Tasting notes: chocolate, nougat and caramel.
There are differing opinions about the aging and degrading of green coffee, and every roaster has their own way of trying to stop the clock. At Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters, they've invested in freezing their green coffee.
If you've ever scrolled through the Phil & Sebastian website, I am sure you have come across the phrase, "This green coffee was frozen immediately on its arrival in Calgary to preserve freshness."
We chatted with Phil Robertson to learn what exactly this means.
"Freezing green is one of the most important things that we do for quality. The real reason for doing it is quality preservation," Robertson began.
So here is how it works: the shipping containers holding their green coffee are delivered to their freezing space (a third-party freezing warehouse used to store frozen food). Once all the bags are removed and put on pallets, they are put in a special chamber that rapidly freezes the green. Once frozen, they are put in the warehouse, where they remain until they are ready to be roasted. Once a week, the coffee that will be roasted within that same week is released from the warehouse and given three days to defrost.
They got the idea of freezing their green from George Howell, founder of George Howell Coffee in the United States. Howell is widely considered a pioneer of specialty coffee.
As a vocal advocate for freezing green coffee, Howell has hosted events where he will release vintage coffees– between 5-6 years old– from his "frozen library." Though recognizing that it could make his competition stiffer, Howell is outspoken about wanting other roasters to freeze their green coffee.
Of course, there are pros and cons to the practice.
"Freezing is very expensive, and you can make an argument about the carbon footprint; we are looking for ways to lower that. But from a quality standpoint, I have never seen anything that can touch it," Robertson explained.
Since coffee is seasonal, but we want to drink it all year round, roasters have always been posed with the challenge of maintaining the freshness of their coffee. Something Robertson, like all roasters, is keenly aware of.
"The hardest time for coffee is February and March because you haven't got your fresh crop coffees from the northern hemisphere, and the coffee from the southern hemisphere is aging. But with green freezing, you can basically stop the clock. So once we get the coffee, I can tell you with a high level of certainty that whether you order it today or in 6 months, it will taste the same."
This white honey processed Costa Rican coffee has tasting notes of chocolate, vanilla wafer and apricot and fits in Phil & Sebastian’s R2 category.
“There are lots of chocolate notes in the cup; it has a heavier body that is very silky. It has sweet vanilla wafter flavours when hot, but as it cools, these develop into delicate apricot-like notes.” - Phil Robertson
This washed Ethiopian coffee has tasting notes of black tea, jasmine and peach tea and fits in Phil & Sebastian’s R3 category.
"When the coffee is hot, it has a lot of black tea notes and a bit of lemon. Then, as it cools, the complexity opens up and develops into a floral jasmine flavour that finishes with a peach tea note. It has a light body and becomes very perfumed as it cools.” - Phil Robertson
Phil & Sebastian work closely with farms in Ethiopia and have been visiting them for 12 years. Phil Robertson explained to us they chose to source this coffee and how it represents a small area in the Gedeb region.
"I have been going to Ethiopia for 12 years, and this particular area of Gedeb has been exciting for me for a long time. I was specifically fascinated by Danche as it's from a washing station that is a little bit further up the mountain, so it's a bit higher in altitude and a bit more remote. This means that the washing station has lower volumes of coffee as producers would rather walk down the mountain to deliver coffee rather than up. This means that the coffee processed there is really from that tight, localized area. And so you get these specific, regional characteristics that are really interesting, and you also get a single core varietal. The coffee is about 90% Kurume and 10% Dega."
]]>Rosso Coffee Roasters began as a coffee shop in the Ramsey neighborhood of Calgary, Alberta, in 2007. Initially called Caffe Rosso, the cafe was run entirely by owner David Crosby. In 2009, he opened a second location in the Telus Convention Center and, in 2012, a third location in the Arriva Tower.
That same year, Crosby's half-brother Cole Torode who was just two years out of high school joined the company as a partner. With a larger business plan in mind, Crosby and Torode spent time in the States learning to roast and immersing themselves in the coffee industry. Upon returning to Calgary, the team acquired a Probat L12 roaster and began roasting their own coffee.
Rosso is B Corp Certified, has five cafe locations throughout Calgary, and has been awarded the ATB Small Business of the Year 2016 through the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. Crosby and Torode have been named Avenue Magazine's Top 40 Under 40. Torode has won the National Barista Championship twice and placed 5th and 3rd in the World Barista Championship out of 54 countries.
In 2023, they worked alongside Boram Um, this year's World Barista Champion, and roasted the coffee he used at the finales in Athens, Greece.
A SOVDA machine is an optical sorter that looks for and removes defect coffee beans. Rosso has not only one SOVDA but two, to ensure the best cup possible. The two serve different purposes - one is for green coffee sorting before it gets funnelled into the roasting drum, and the other is for post-roast sorting. Rosso told us that they are the only roastery in the world that has the first SOVDA, green sorting before roasting. They are also one of only dozens of roasters around the world that also use a SOVDA post-roast sorting machine.
“We do it before roasting so we are able to take out black defect beans that wouldn’t necessarily show up after being roasted. The pale defect beans like quakers we remove after they are roasted. It has definitely improved the quality of our coffee. When we roasted on a batch roaster, we were able to pick out defects by hand but now, roasting the amount we do, that is impossible,” Paul Stephens, the Head Roaster at Rosso Coffee Roasters, explained.
Rosso realized that the model of purchasing coffee was not meeting the needs of producers. To combat this, Rosso organizes prices directly with producers or their representatives rather than following the commodity market price. In the past five years, the commodity price has been, on average $1.42 USD/lb ($1.88 CAD/lb). In 2022, Rosso paid on average $4.03 USD/lb ($5.44 CAD/lb) to producers.
In addition to co-owning Rosso Coffee Roasters, Torode is the Head of Coffee and Operations at Forward Specialty Green Coffee Importers. They work directly with producers to import unique, thoughtful and transparent coffee to North America. Rather than operating as a bridge between producers and roasters, Forward aims to facilitate a community of coffee lovers that pushes the industry forward.
In addition to offering a seasonally rotating selection of single-origin coffees, Rosso has year-round mainstay blends.
Turning Point
Roast: Medium
Tasting notes: dark chocolate, mixed nuts & smooth
This is Rosso's best-selling coffee. This cup has minimal acidity and a medium body.
Two Wheel
Roast: Express
Tasting notes: citrus, balanced, sweet & smooth
This espresso is smooth, easy to extract, sweet and balanced.
Basecamp
Roast: Dark
Tasting notes: dark chocolate & molasses
This is a classic dark roast coffee with a rich body and no acidity.
Day Tripper
Roast: Bright & Juicy
Tasting notes: fruit medley, honey, juicy
This roast is light and juicy with honey sweetness.
Decaf
Process: Swiss Water Process
Tasting notes: milk chocolate & raisin
The Swiss Water Process minimally impacted the cup and retained its sweetness.
- What is the ethos of what you guys are trying to do at Rosso?
The goal is to bridge the gap in consumer education with the hardships of producing coffee and try to potentially shift a more economic value towards the beginning of the chain to really help the lifestyle and the livelihood of these people we're working with.
In 2020, we went to Myanmar. The Coffee Quality Institute (a US NGO) and Winrock (an international non-profit) partnered up with the goal of taking farmers in Myanmar who are planting opium and educating them about coffee because their conditions for coffee are pretty outstanding. The aim was to shift their mentalities with the hope that they would change their crops. They'll have better sustainability and less danger or risk in their lives. These guys went from selling their coffee internally where there was little to no export internally for probably like $0.20 cents or $0.30 cents per pound. We paid FOB $3.80 a pound for the coffee.
- You’ve been competing as a competitive barista since 2011. Why do you put such a heavy focus on that?
Great question. I just love to torture myself. No, I’m kidding, I’m kidding.
When I first competed, I was not part of the business - I was just working as a Barista. The amount of knowledge that I was able to extract from the competition and the knowledge of coffee - you get to go up there and present a coffee, and I have to understand what I'm saying if I'm going to say it, but also the fundamentals and the approach. How do I make this coffee taste the way I'm going to describe it to taste?
I think it works in our eyes as such a solid template to grow our understanding. I think the reason I still compete and might compete again is to lead by example.
It's really been a platform that has continued to push us forward as coffee professionals, and Dave and I are both very competitive people. I think when we found out that there's a coffee competition and we were both working in coffee, we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah. Let's do it, man. Let's win this thing.’
Paul Stephens, the Head Roaster at Rosso Coffee Roasters, has been roasting coffee for 21 years and has been roasting for Rosso since 2016. During his career, he has gone from keeping pen-and-paper notes of roast temperatures to operating some of the most high-tech machinery in the game. We caught up with Stephens to get some insight into how the industry has changed over the years and what it was like working at one of the first roastery/cafes in the UK.
- How did you get started in roasting?
My first barista job was in 1996 at a sandwich shop. They had an old espresso machine, and they would grind all the espresso for the day into a bin and scoop it into a portafilter when they needed a shot. At the time, people thought it was the best coffee in town.
I started roasting in 2001 when I got a job at Red Roaster; it was one of the first cafes in England to have a roaster inside it. I started as a barista and took over roasting after a couple of months. When I first started, there was very little information about roasting. It was a secretive industry where people had blends, and no one would tell you what they put in them or how they roasted. That has definitely changed now there is so much information out there that you can get on coffee. I worked there for 15 years then in 2016, I immigrated to Canada and started at Rosso Coffee Roasters.
- How would you say your approach to roasting has developed?
When I started, we were just using pens and paper to write down temperatures and times as we roasted. There was no computer connected to the roaster. Now, we have so much more information and feedback. I have far more fine control now; it was more hit-and-miss back in the day.
When I roast now, I am more instinctive, and I know better how coffee will behave when we get a new one. Initially, it was a voyage of discovery because I didn't know how things were going to turn out. I am less surprised as to how things turn out now, and I have more control. In general, in the industry, the quality of coffee has gone up. The best coffees we had 20 years ago would be average coffees nowadays. Everything from the processing on the farm to how it is transported and roasted has gone up in quality.
The 2023 World Barista Championship coveted title was won by Boram Um, whose family owns the farm Fazenda Um in Espirito Santo, Brazil.
Um trained for the competition at Rosso Coffee Roasters, and Paul Stephens was the one responsible for roasting Boram’s coffee that helped him take first place.
We were lucky enough to feature a coffee from Fazenda Um in Issue #8 of the Light & Adnverous Pack with tasting notes of chocolate ganache, lavender and Lemon.
“First you will notice the mouthfeel; it’s creamy and coating, which combines with the chocolate flavour to create a sensation of a chocolate dessert. A soft apple and lavender note with gentle acidity follows this. The finish is bright with a burst of lemon and lime.” - Paul Stephens
]]>Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world, which is exporting a third of the globe’s coffee. It all started with a scandal.
A "Seeduction"
As the legend goes, in 1727 a Brazilian lieutenant by the name of Francisco de Mello Palheta was sent by the emperor to French Guiana to settle a border dispute, as well as find coffee seedlings. The Portuguese wanted a cut of this coffee market, but the governor of bordering French Guiana was unwilling to send over any seeds. On top of this, the ever-present border dispute was straining the two countries' relationship.
The solution? Seducing the Guiana governor’s wife. It’s told that Palheta spent his trip flirtatiously charming the wife, and after dinner one night, she gave him a bouquet of flowers with the coffee seeds hidden in them. The rest is history!
At first, coffee production was only consumed locally, however, in the mid-1800s, coffee demand increased in Europe and the Americas. This resulted in a coffee boom in the 19th century that saw coffee steadily rise to become the country’s greatest export by 1850.
Success Through Tragedy
The two things that made this possible were slavery and a devastating disease on Asian coffee plants. In the mid-1800s, it is estimated that over 1.5 million slaves were imported to work on Brazilian coffee plantations until slavery was finally abolished in 1888. Secondly, a decimating disease known as coffee rust completely destroyed the thriving Asian coffee industry, which allowed Brazil to rise up to meet the demand.
By the 1920s, Brazil already had a near-monopoly on coffee production, growing around 80% of the world’s coffee.
Staying Humble
This major coffee boom did eventually recede as other nations recovered from the coffee rust epidemic (largely due to the widespread use of the Robusta plant!). The Brazilian government was also investing in other agricultural sectors in order to decrease the country’s single crop dependency. Despite this, in the mid-1960s, coffee still took up 60% of Brazil’s total exports.
The Present
Brazil continues to be the largest producer of coffee in the world, a title it has held for over 150 years. There are currently over 220,000 coffee farms, covering around 27,000 sq. km across the country, with approximately 3.5 million people involved in the coffee industry. Despite all the different coffee farms, the Brazilian bean tends to be distinctly sweet and chocolatey, with low acidity and nutty undertones.
A distinguished and celebrated cup that all started with a seduction!
As the third largest coffee producer in the world, Colombia has a well established reputation. Both in quality and quantity, it is a country known internationally for its huge output of high quality coffee and internally for its celebration of the bean.
The History of Coffee in Colombia
Introduced to the country sometime in the early to mid-1700s, coffee production slowly grew over the next century and was largely dominated by sprawling plantations built with borrowed money from foreign countries. When favourable prices suddenly disappeared due to war and economic instability in other parts of the globe, many plantations shut down operations or were abandoned. By 1875, coffee farming had largely shifted to small holders working on tiny parcels of land as government policy worked to reintroduce Colombian beans to the global market. To this day coffee is treated favourably all around the country, with infrastructure for farming and exporting being maintained by the government as well as unions of farmers who have worked hard for generations to present the best coffees they can to the world.
Nariño Region
Nariño is a region made up of primarily smallholder producers. With the average farm size being less than 1 hectare, many of the farmers have formed groups to work collaboratively. The region is home to some of the highest-altitude farms in Colombia. This, paired with its close proximity to the equator, creates an ideal environment for growing vibrant and complex coffees.
Tolima Region
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a rebel group, had control of the Tolima region for many years. During this time, farmers were unable to export their coffee. 10 years ago, since the signing of two peace treaties with the indigenous groups and farmers, the coffee farmers in the region have been able to resume growing and exporting coffee.
During the FARC’s occupation of the region, the farmland was untouched. This resulted in soil that was free of any agrochemicals. Because of this, farmers in Tolima have been able to use organic farming methods more easily compared to other regions.
Harvesting
Something that sets Colombia apart from most other countries is their harvest. While most countries harvest cherries once a year for 2-3 months straight, Colombia is one of the few places in the world where most farms have two separate harvests every year. Meaning they produce coffee year-round and are almost always selling. They also host two Cup Of Excellence events annually to make sure no farmers miss out on the chance to compete.
The Taste
Colombian coffees are usually considered crowd pleasers, but have a varied taste profile as the terroir and microclimates of different regions can change this. Depending on the region, the sweetness can vary between tropical and stonefruits, or it can be smooth and silky like milk chocolate. In some varietals grown in specific microclimates, you can sometimes even get floral and tea-like qualities. Colombian coffees are often heavier on the body while still remaining fairly silky and usually finish smooth and sweet, leaving delicate flavours in the aftertaste.
We've featured Peruvian coffees numerous times in The Roasters Pack, and we were thirsty to learn more about it! Let’s take a closer look at the famous coffee origin, and see how it all got started.
The History
Coffee plants were first introduced to Peru in the mid-1700s, and production grew steadily over the next 150 years. Coffee beans very rarely made it outside of the country and what was grown was enjoyed almost exclusively within its borders. This changed drastically when the British seized large amounts of land to farm huge quantities in Peru as coffee rust disease had decimated crops in Indonesia, their former coffee supplier.
Part of the reason for this is coffee is a tricky crop to invest in. With the instability of the commodity market, farmers are unsure if coffee is the crop to rely on for providing a steady income for their families.
Over time, Britain slowly sold the land back to Peru to raise funds for both world wars, and then land was divided among the farmers. With the land once again belonging to the people and global demand still being high, many coffee farmers chose to focus on quantity over quality for much of the second half of the 20th century.
With specialty coffee growing year after year, farmers in traditionally high-volume countries like Peru are working to produce better coffees. They’re doing this by improving existing infrastructure and working with exporters to create the most progressive methods for farming they can.
The Terroir & Infrastructure
It doesn’t hurt that Peru is the second most biodiverse country in the world. The north of the country has arguably the best climate for coffee: ripening season, altitude, the type of soil, and the differentiation between daytime and nighttime temperatures. Basically, every factor that goes into coffee production is great, even the road infrastructure.
Aside from Peru’s amazing terroir, incentive-based pricing has already paid off for many farmers looking to increase both the quality of their coffees and secure better money for their livelihoods. In some countries where prices have not been attractive enough, the children of farmers choose to search for better opportunities in bigger cities nearby and do not continue the farms’ coffee production.
The infrastructure and support Peruvian farmers are now receiving through direct trade partnerships are showing that a good living can be made off of well-grown specialty coffee, and families can work together on planning even better and more stable futures.
The Taste
Peruvian coffees are often clean and nutty, with hints of berry jams punctuating the brighter notes of the bean. They have mouth-filling, creamy bodies with a lasting, dry sweetness at the end, usually likened to a vanilla cake.
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- How does seasonality impact blending different coffees together?
You want to buy coffee that is in season and as fresh as possible. But with single origins, you never have something consistent month to month, year-round. So blends are a way of doing that without buying a year’s worth of coffee and using it until it’s really old. With blending, even if the coffees in the blend change, you can balance them against each other and maintain a particular character in the blend year-round. So you can have consistent profiles throughout the year with coffee that is always fresh.
- What is your approach to roasting blends?
We always blend after roasting. Blending before you roast can limit what you can blend because the coffees will have different responses in the roaster as the beans are physically different from each other they will absorb different amounts of heat and have different chemical changes. In the end, you need to be able to properly brew both coffees using the same methodology.
How does the roast impact the way the coffee brews?
The darker your roast, the easier it is to extract the flavours. But it’s not just in terms of the colour of the coffee; it’s about how broken down physically the bean is. So, a light roast with a very long development time could brew like a dark roast. Essentially, more-developed roasts brew faster than less-developed roasts. So, for example, African coffees tend to be denser than South American coffees. Therefore, they need a longer development time. So, if we roasted them the same way for the same time, the African coffee would be less developed than the South American coffee, making it harder to extract.
- What is the theory behind the components in the Foundry blend?
We want Foundry to essentially be a house blend for a third-wave cafe. It’s approachable but still interesting. To achieve this, we take two very different coffees, like an African that is delicate, floral and fruit-forward, and we blend that with, something like, a South or Central American coffee that is more chocolatey and rich with muted acidity. Then, we tailor the roast profile to balance the coffees and make a cup that is a good everyday coffee with some interesting touches.
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- How did you get started in coffee?
It started when I was a student at Western University. When I saw Kenyan coffee at the Starbucks on campus, I noticed there was no mention of the producer.
I would see this and think of my grandmother, who’s grown coffee for ages. It felt like her story was neglected, which got me thinking about what happens to the farmers who get paid by Starbucks. Where does the money go? I was studying economics at the time, and I could see there was demand, but the suppliers weren’t answering these questions. The math didn’t add up.
I was supposed to work in an insurance company, but I knew I wanted to do something related to coffee from an entrepreneurial perspective. I couldn’t tell my mom because, in Africa, entrepreneurship is not really championed as a career you can live off of. There’s the mentality that you’re a woman, and you’re going to struggle.
So I told myself, I’m just going to do what I was sent here to do, get my first degree, get my second degree. When I went back to Africa and told my mom my plan, she didn’t talk to me for two years.
- You mentioned that you started the exporting company in 2009, and it took ten years for you to get into Canada. How did that journey go?
It’s hard to break into a circle and gain trust. A lot of people don’t think you’re serious; they just want to hear your lovely stories about Kenya and move on. I think the industry has been so used to the traditional colonial ways of how things run in coffee with certain exporters. The moment you’re a newbie, it’s hard to break into that circle and become trusted. I also thought my Canadian background and Western degree would help me, but it still took a while. I don’t think the western world has a lot of respect for smaller exporters from producing countries.
- What’s your hope for the future of Vava?
I hope the power dynamics can shift in favour of producers. I hope that a consumer can make a more informed decision if they know that a producer isn’t getting their share. I think some roasters and cafes are too shy to do the hard work and do the right thing. They hide behind the fact that they don’t want to raise the price for consumers because things are hard. But things are hard for everyone, especially in coffee-producing countries
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- How did you first get into roasting coffee?
I started roasting coffee as a hobby nine years ago. I was using a small 100g roaster, and then a few friends wanted to buy coffee, so I upgraded to a slightly bigger one. It just remained a hobby until 2020. During the pandemic, my friend Robin and I decided to make a business out of it.
Our real motivator was wanting to build relationships in our community and not feel so isolated. We saw coffee as a tremendous way to get involved in people’s lives and know our community.
We are both full-time pastors in our church, and we wanted to get to know who was living in our city. The driving force for us is really to build relationships and see our community thrive. And, of course, selfishly, I just love coffee and learning about coffee and getting to drink amazing coffee. I am also really excited about getting to build relationships on the other side of the world. We want to build long-term relationships with producers too.
- Has the community in Vernon been responsive to the lighter roast specialty coffees?
Our business model is diverse because we realize many people in Vernon are still warming up to the idea of lighter coffees. 80% of what we roast is what we call our more ‘grocery store’ blends, which are more medium-dark roast. Then we have our single-origin lighter roast coffees, and we are slowly trying to warm people up to single-origin coffees that are more closely connected with farmers. Once we have a cafe, which we don’t yet, we can hopefully get people more excited about that side of things.
- What is your ethos when it comes to green sourcing?
We work primarily with one coffee importer, who also work in other origins like Guatemala and Ethiopia, so it’s been beneficial for us to know there are people with boots on the ground and to know that the coffees we are buying aren’t just auctioned off to the highest bidder. We want to know that the coffees have been bought with what the farms need to live a sustainable life in mind.
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- What’s the story with Modus?
We started Modus out of a 100 sq ft space with essentially nothing, the shop came a couple of years later, again built with minimal funds, but in the start, it was really to satisfy what we thought was missing. Lots of people are turned off by specialty coffee, and we wanted to do something that’s a little easier to understand, and that’s done mainly through the profiles and how we structure the coffees that fit into those profiles seasonally.
- How would you describe your green buying ethos?
Now that we’re able to move more volume we’re gravitating more towards working with the same groups and producers anytime possible, year after year. This means that we’re essentially planning our coffees at least 6 months ahead. We’ve grown into this type of buying method to foster better relationships, and build more collaboration. We are small, so we are still working with importers, but actually, they do a lot of the leg work and we’ve been introduced to a number of groups who are either brand new to the specialty market, have difficult access to it, or are in plain dire circumstances. We are trying to shift our coffees to support more of these producers not only because they need it more than more established producers but because their coffees are amazing considering the little resources some have.
- What are you most proud of with Modus?
I think mainly the fact that we started it all with very little funds, and so far have not accepted any type of loans, or taken money from any investors. We’re both big on organic growth, and see that as a more sustainable way to grow something that people can relate to, including staff as well. The hands-on owner/operator model can be rough, but what else would we do if we’re not the ones also pulling shots and cleaning toilets?
- What are your aspirations for where you would like to take Modus?
Same as what we’ve been doing, we both want to keep it tight, efficient, and good. The next mission is to find a more suitable space to move our production to. Aside from that, we’re a coffee roaster first and want to keep the bar high on that end always.
]]>- What made you decide to start a coffee company?
Hayes: When we first started this, I was struggling pretty heavily with post-concussion syndrome. Every day, I would be dealing with different migraines, dizziness, nausea, etc. I needed to find some sense of what I could do on my own time and without a timeline of a boss.
Then, it just happened in that timeframe. We had met Henrique Cambraia, a Brazilian fourth-generation coffee grower, and his team, so it just seemed like both worlds collided at the right time. That’s when we ended up ordering a little five-kilo roaster out of Montréal, hooked it up in my garage and just started to try to learn as fast as we could. I had seen my father tinkering around when I was a little bit younger. I didn’t really understand why he wanted to do that until I started to learn a little more about the differences and different kinds of coffees and how beautiful they can be. I really got into it, and I was like, “Yeah, this could be a pretty interesting and fun way to live my life.”
- What is your ethos when it comes to green sourcing?
Huizinga: Right now, we are working on making sure we can have transparency with our sourcing and pricing. We are trying to make sure we source really good coffee that is approachable for everyone; Andrew is probably one of the most amicable and welcoming people, and we want Roasti to be like that.
- What is your philosophy when it comes to roasting?
Huizinga: We are trying to make sure that we represent a coffee in the way the producer would want it to be represented. I think that roasting is a super important stage, and we have a lot of control over the end profile of the cup, but we get a lot of notes from the importers we work with from the farmers about the coffee and what they expect from it, and we try to work towards that
]]>“I met Emmanual Baho, owner of Baho Coffee Exports in 2018. We actually first met on Instagram and then just started talking via Whatsapp, where I learned more about him and the work he was doing in Rwanda.
“Baho is the only Rwandese-born exporter that exists in the country, so I was really excited to work with him. In Rwanda, you have a lot of people managing washing stations or exporters buying and selling coffee, but never the ones who manage the entire structure. These facilities are often run by Rwandese people but owned by European entities. Even to this day, 60-80% of the coffee industry in Rwanda is owned by multinationals.
“To me, the coffee in Rwanda lacks access to specialty, and it’s still very hard to find in North America. When you do find it, the coffee often has generic profiles, and there’s little understanding of what the country is like, what the different growing regions are like, and what the reality is for coffee growing in the country.
“So I was really excited to be working with Baho. From day one, he really had this desire to grow and learn and expand the Rwandese market. We usually work one-on-one with producers (in Honduras and Guatemala, for example). Through this method, we’re working with Baho to work with a small network of producers.”
In 2020, Baho began working with Augustin Theophile Benda, the producer of this coffee. Since then, they have worked with him for every crop cycle.
This coffee was processed at the Humure Washing Station. “Humure, named after the highest hill in the area, is located in the Eastern Province of Rwanda. It was newly constructed in 2017, and Emmanuel purchased the station in 2018 after watching it be very poorly managed throughout its first year of operation. He immediately made large investments in infrastructure - new fermentation tanks, new washing channels, and larger storage units - thus, the production capacity has increased by nearly 20 times in the past two years,” Adams explained of Semilla Coffee.
“Since working with Baho, Augustin Benda has received a price 70% over what he would have received at the national farmgate price.
“Augustin is one of only two farmers at Humure who we’re able to have this direct connection, and it’s a pleasure to be able to provide to the North American market a single producer, multiple-year relationship coffee from Rwanda, something that is hardly ever seen,” Adams shared
]]>- How did you first get into specialty coffee?
I got into it about eight years ago. I have always had a love for good food and drink. I was on a journey trying to be more aware of what I was eating and drinking and the processes that go into it. During that journey, I noticed coffee had its micro-niche world of that exact microcosm, and I loved it. Since then, it’s just a growing love for the coffee world.
I began a roastery with a friend; it was called Maker House Coffee. It was a hobby, but we produced enough coffee for a few cafes. It ended a few years ago with a seamless transition into starting Birdy as my own roastery. Maker House was slightly more conventional, but Birdy is more specialty, and I aim for a Nordic roasting style. There are a lot of darker coffees around the Red Deer area, so I wanted to do something lighter and more expressive.
- What is your cafe space like with Craft Beer Commonwealth?
We are located in the Gasoline Alley Farmers Market. When they built the space, a group of breweries made Commonwealth Brewery. They then asked me if I wanted to take one end of the bar for Birdy and roast coffee there. After a while, I became the general manager of both businesses, and I could leave my construction job and do Birdy full-time. It’s been such a cool adventure and a positive time with my business partners; they are just letting me do what I love.
- What is the specialty coffee scene in Red Deer like?
It’s growing; we’re seeing a really cool, slow change with more conversation about it. There’s really only a couple of us, specialty roasters in central Alberta. My favourite is finding good coffees that bridge the gap for people and get them interested in specialty coffee.
We’re working on a coffee sour beer. So we would intentionally underdevelop a coffee in a roast to the point where the acidity is pretty sour, but hopefully not astringent, then put that in with a sour beer. If it works, great; if not, that’s fine. It is all part of the journey
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