Coffee
Goal:
The dream that drives BREW is to explore and unfold exceptional coffee experiences in a manner that gives better living conditions to coffee farmers across the globe.
Coffee quality is brought about in three links: Farmer, roaster and barista. We work hard to ensure that these three links collaborate, working towards the collective goal: Exploring coffee’s taste potential. As coffee is grown far from Belgium, it is important for us to work with transparency. With our Direct Trade model, we lay out a distinct set of criteria for our trading with the producers.
Direct Trade is based on the notion that the better the quality we get, the better price we are able to pay, and the better quality we will have again the following year and so forth. Ultimately, our dream is for a coffee farmer in Kenya to obtain the same status and living conditions as a wine grower in France.
Roastery
The roastery is the pivotal point or link for our entire enterprise and from the very beginning, we have wanted to open and unravel the roasting process for everyone.
Green coffee beans neither smell nor taste of coffee as you know it. The taste and aroma evolves only during roasting. We wish to prove coffee a product of nature – of cultivation, varieties of coffee trees, soil conditions, rain, sun, wind – everything that in the end leave their distinct fingerprints on coffee’s taste.
This is why we seek out extremely clean, sweet and aromatic coffees, and roast them lightly in order to highlight their natural taste. Each coffee is roasted with it’s own roast profile to enhance that particular coffee’s unique qualities.
We roast every week and supply our wholesale customers, our own coffee cart and webshop customers with fresh coffee on a daily basis. And yet, freshly roasted coffee is just a small part of the equation. We buy, roast and sell freshly harvested crops that are in season, we store the green beans in either vacuum bags or special Grain Pro bags in a climate controlled cellar, and we rinse every bag of roasted coffee with nitrogen in order to preserve the high quality. Every roasted batch undergoes a number of quality checks, the most significant being the cupping. We taste every single batch and we always strive to do even better.
Direct Trade
When you see the Direct Trade logo on our coffee bags, you will know that the following two criteria have been met:
1. The producer is paid at least 50% more than the Fair Trade price.
2. We visit the producer every year.
When we launched BREW, we wanted to form a transparent trade model that would guarantee us the best quality of produce, and guarantee the producers payment that meets that better quality. It goes without saying that producers must be paid accordingly in order to take an interest in raising standards. For that reason, it is basic in Direct Trade that we ensure that surplus charges paid for premium quality reach the producers.
Visiting producers every year builds a personal relation. On the one hand, they get to know who we are and that we take good care of their product. On the other hand, we get to know them and understand how our produce is grown. During visits, we exchange what qualities we prefer and we get to experience the details of production at first hand.
Coffee is grown in countries with substantially different living conditions than ours. For that reason, many coffee lovers wish to trust that those who have created the basis for the better quality are paid accordingly. Unfortunately, consumers are often given the run-around rather than actual facts about how a given coffee has been traded.
Impact Starts With "I".