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Roastery

Coffee

Coffee is still the mainstay of Just Us!. As a relatively small coffee business, we have many advantages that give us a significant edge when it comes to quality and service. Join us for a quick tour of our roastery.

Caring about Quality

Here you can see our whole production process from the arrival of “Green” coffee to the shipping of our fresh roasted coffee. At each stage, we show how we do things differently from most larger coffee roasters, to produce a better coffee.

Stages:

Receiving: Coffee is purchased directly from Fair Trade coops around the world. Because we maintain close relationships withour suppliers, we get the “pick of the crop”. Generally, high altitude coffees are the best – they are sweeter, “harder” (more dense) and more flavourful.
Storage: Coffee is stored in our climate controlled warehouse to preserve quality. Ideally coffee should be kept cool - under 70 degrees F - and humidity should be at approximately 50%.
Roaster: Coffee is roasted to order in small batches in our classic Probat drum roasters and air cooled to maximize flavour rather than being sprayed with water.
Packaging: Coffee is packaged directly from the roaster in our state of the art one-way valve bags and sealed. Fresh coffee emits twice its volume in carbon dioxide gas which drives the oxygen out of the bag, maximizing flavour and shelf life. The one-way valve on the bag allows the coffee to degas and air to escape, thereby preventing air from entering the bag, which would cause the coffee to become stale and the bag to potentially burst.
Shipping: Orders are filled and shipped within within 24 - 48 hours. To deliver the freshest possible product, we encourage our customers to order frequently.
Cupping & Quality Control: The cupping room is where we taste all of our coffee, both to make buying decisions and to ensure that our daily roasts are consistently good. It is also where we come up with our special Just Us! blends and concentrate on keeping all the coffee variables constant: roast colour, amount of coffee, grind size, water temperature and time of brewing. This way we can best evaluate the actual quality of coffee. Evaluation is based on taste (sweet, sour, bitter), body (watery or syrupy), brightness (fruity or flat), and after-taste (pleasant, lingering or not). For more information see Why Cup?.

More (then you ever wanted to know) about quality and cupping

“Cupping” is the in-name given to coffee tasting. It sounds a bit uppity but it's really very interesting and a lot of fun with all its “slurping”, “swishing”, and “spitting”, to come up with the best tasting coffee possible.