Interview with Jasmin Tétreault, Co-Founder of Nucleus Torréfacteurs
How did you get into specialty coffee?
Right after the pandemic, I started going to coffee shops more frequently. I tasted an espresso for the first time at a local shop, and since I wasn’t used to espresso, it was intense and super acidic. I didn’t like it at first, but it piqued my interest. I went to another coffee shop and ordered a Costa Rican yellow honey on pourover, and it was unexpectedly fruity and ferment-y. This was the coffee that made me love coffee.
What inspired you and your co-founder, Louis-Charles Blais to start Nucleus, and how did you come up with the name?
I met Louis while we both worked as baristas for the same coffee shop. At the time, Louis was a full-time web developer and was working as a barista on the side. I own another business called Café Fabrique, and Louis actually built my website for it! We always had fun doing small projects together, and last year I invited him to the SCA Expo in Portland. It was at this expo that we decided we wanted to start roasting, and we bought ourselves an Aillio Bullet roaster. We decided on the name Nucleus over a glass of wine, seeing that the nucleus is the center of the atom, but it also reminded us of the seed being the center of the coffee cherry.
What are some goals you have for Nucleus going forward?
I think our next goal would be to get an optical sorter so we can raise the quality of our production and sort out defects, like quakers, more effectively!
What change would you like to see in specialty coffee, and what is Nucleus doing to reflect that?
We would like to see more people gravitating towards electric roasters, and we’d like to see companies creating more electric roasters. I think it’s so much simpler to roast with electricity as you don’t have to mess with gas and/or installations, and it’s much better for the environment. One downside is that some electric roasters are a bit laggy in terms of their performance. Electric roasters have a big heating element that remains hot even when turned off, while gas roasters are more reactive. However, when you plan ahead and turn off the power early, you can roast awesome coffee on an electric roaster.
Another change I’d like to see is producers being paid premiums that reflect the cost of living at origin. Some countries have higher standards of living than others, but the coffee prices don’t always match that. So it would be great to see coffee sourcing and pricing that reflects that.
Karen Duong
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