Today the humble coffee bean has become part of our everyday life. Despite being one of the most popular beverages on the planet, many people have little knowledge about what they drink every day.
Legend has it that coffee was discovered by a goat herder named Kaldi who noticed his animals getting jittery after eating ripe coffee cherries – yes the coffee bean is actually a fruit!
It was from here in Ethiopia that the first coffee trees were cultivated. Coffee is now produced in many countries and we currently source our beans direct from local farmers in Brazil, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Columbia and Peru.
The two coffee strains are arabica and robusta. Robusta has a high caffeine content and the plant is more disease resistant. Arabica contains 50% more lipids and has a higher sugar content, this leads to higher acidity from which more complex flavours and aromas can be created.
In one study, results showed a direct relation between lipid content and beverage quality – which is why we use arabica beans for all of our coffee roasting.
At present our range of four single origin roasts from Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru are available as beans or ground to your requirements in 250g sealed bags.
In essence, roasting coffee is pretty simple. Green beans are put in an oven and as the beans heat up they go through a chemical process and eventually turn brown. However, if you want to roast an exceptional coffee, this process takes a little more skill and patience to discover optimum flavours. The key ingredients to a good roast starts with the quality of the bean – we buy our organically grown beans, direct from the farmers to ensure we get the best.
We’re proud of our roaster, it has served us well – it rotates the coffee beans in a continuously spinning drum heated by jets of hot air. During this process the chemical reactions begin to take place turning the bean from green to various shades of brown which is a result of the sugars being drawn out by the heat in a caramelisation process.
The strength of the coffee will remain the same but the power of the flavour is dependent on the roast – light, medium and dark. We roast in small batches. This gives us the flexibility to experiment with the relationship between time and temperature in order to maximise flavours.
So if you really wanted to, we could in fact provide you with a particular roast all of your own.
At present our range of four single origin roasts from Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru are available as beans or ground to your requirements in 250g sealed bags.
Products include: Kenyan Blue Mountain, Indian Cherry Robusta, Honduran Coffee, Nicaraguan Coffee, Chinese Coffee, Decaf Coffee Beans, Vietnamese Coffee Beans, Home Blend Coffee Beans, Colombian Coffee Beans, Guatemalan Coffee Beans, Brazilian Coffee Beans, Peruvian Coffee Beans
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