ROASTING

Bruce pours green beans into the roaster

Consistently roasting naturally sweet, chocolatey coffee is at the heart of what we do. Excellent quality comes from experience, and we've been offering Toronto's best coffee for over a decade. What separates us from the rest is our commitment to highly accessible medium roasts that are easy to brew and, most importantly, delicious to drink.

Too often, specialty coffee moves in the direction of lightly roasted coffee which is challenging to brew. We think coffee should be sweet, not sour, earthy, smoky, or grassy. We have a simple menu and roast in small batches, so we can promise that the bag of beans you enjoyed last time will taste the same as the bag you just ordered.

Our ability to promise this consistency comes from the experience of working with top-of-the-line roasting equipment and software. To achieve the best expression of the coffee naturally, we use a direct flame-on-drum, cast iron roaster with precise variable controls, hand-made in Portugal. We take the extra time and effort to make sure the heat is consistent for each batch. Much like cooking a steak in a cast iron pan, we preheat our drum, so each roast comes out with the same delicious caramelized flavor. We combine this old-school approach with state-of-the-art software to continually monitor each roast's development and catch any unwanted variation. We taste it ourselves and proudly stand behind our name.

Our approach to sourcing raw green coffee from farms worldwide relies on the expertise of qualified brokers and farm inspectors. We recognize that our strengths are in roasting and serving coffee. We work with brokers who specialize in their field. They know what to look for at the farming, harvest, and import phases of the process. Our broker's expertise helps in creating a sustainable relationship between the consumer and the land. This expertise enables the producer to increase quality and yield year after year while increasing their conjoined efforts. Although we do not pay the licensing fee to display a FairTrade trademark, all of our coffees are purchased at prices above FairTrade.

If it's your first time trying our coffee, we highly recommend our tried and true roast, Butterknife. It's the same naturally sweet and chocolatey coffee used in all of our shops and has been a Toronto favorite for over ten years.

Order a bag online or come into one of our locations to find out for yourself.