Arguably one of the most important aspect of being a coffee roaster is sourcing the raw green coffee to roast - while we can add an extra shine to the flavour when we carefully roast it - you need to be starting with an excellent quality product to provide a cup that tastes truly amazing.
Here at White Rose Coffee Roasters we decided from the start we wanted to offer our customers a wide range of choice - a taste of coffee flavours from around the world. Every growing region presents unique new flavours in the cup, and that should make every cup you drink a new and exciting experience - coffee should not be just a hot beverage - but more an experience full of flavour and new tastes. We are so often told by customers they never realised how different coffee really could taste until they compared our El Salvador against a Brazillian or Colombian - there really is a world of coffee flavour out there to be enjoyed.
In order to achieve this world of different coffee, we make use of many different Brokers to source coffee from - it can be difficult because some regions will have limited harvest supply and once it is sold for the year it is not available until the next years harvest - so often we have to stock up early to ensure we do not miss out.
In addition we make use of the Algrano network to source Transparently Traded coffee - this unique platform allows plantation owners around the world to offer their coffee harvest for sale - and in each coffee listing we can see how much the plantation will receive per kilo of green coffee, the transport costs and broker costs. It allows the plantation owner to decide their own value for their crop - based on how well it cups - so they can receive a sustainable price for their product. And when we order from them, we pay up front - in full for the coffee before it has even left their plantation. This allows the plantation to plan ahead for next season, and continue to invest in growing and harvesting really incredible coffee. Of course for us it means the coffee we have paid for today will not arrive until 5 months later - a big investment for a small business but we feel the quality of the coffee - and how it helps the plantations is worth it.
Pictured here is Bruno from Fazenda Inhame - Robert our head roaster visited his plantation in 2019 and we have sourced green coffee from him since then. As you can see it is a family business, with Bruno working hard to provide for his son - and Bruno has taken over the plantation from his Father he worked it all his life. Being able to connect with growers directly on the Algrano platform is invaluable - with their messaging system we can chat virtually with the plantation owners to find more about their current crops or future harvest plans - giving us superb provenance on the coffee we are sourcing.
Of course how the coffee tastes is the most important aspect of sourcing amazing coffee for you, and Algrano is superb because they we will send samples to try of any coffee we are interested in - which we cup and the ones that makes us go WOW are the coffee's we will go on to order.
To make it easier for you to find our Transparently Traded coffee's we have added a new tag Sourced through Algrano so you can filter our range to just those coffee's.
In June 2021 we were sampling Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Algrano, and found an amazing offering from a small plantation owner - here is his bio from Algrano
Tadese Teko is among single producers farmers with capacity of directly exporting his coffee. This coffee is grown in the Gedeb area of specific locality of Gotiti. The coffee in this area is very young compared to other areas of the Gedeo Zone where Yirgacheffe coffee is grown. He does the farming using his family labor. The coffee trees are planted along with the false banana, a plant normally used for food, so that the moisture in the soil is maintained normal.
We really wanted to order this Yirgacheffe, but there had been little interest from other European roasters so there was no volume available to make bringing a container over worth while. What Algrano needed was someone to make a big starting order, so our UK rep Tom could then push over roasters in Europe to add smaller lots to it and make a container shipment worthwhile. So we pitched in with a 40 sack order - 60kg per sack that is a total of 2400 kilos of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and a big investment for us to pay up front. It tipped the balance and Algrano were able to get enough smaller additions to make Tadese Teko coffee possible to ship to Europe - and we are pleased to say it has now landed in the UK and in the next few weeks will be our Ethiopian Yirgacheffe exclusively on White Rose Coffee Roasters.