Our Process
What does sustainable 4th wave coffee look like?
Belching Barista starts by connecting with quality importers whose values align with their own. We seek high quality beans with traceability, ensuring the beans are sourced in a sustainable way.
Educational note: This means that farmers aren’t just getting better wages, but that they are being incentivised to put more effort into their coffee, whether its experimenting with different growing methods, harvesting, or processing the coffee fruit.
The potential importers then send samples of coffees that they are interested in or are recommended. Belching Barista then roasts those samples on their Ikawa 50Pro and heads to the cupping table. The cupping table is where the whole coffee community connects and explores different coffee from various origins, playing with blending coffees in order to find a desired flavour profile. Cupping is important because it’s where the quality is determined.
The Speciality Coffee Association (SCA) has developed a protocol in order to keep the cupping process producing equivalent results between different coffees and roast profiles. This process is where coffee roasters determine how far to take a coffee on the light to dark scale. Roasters have the options to leave it fruity, acidic and floral, or pull those flavours out further to make more room for the chocolate, bitter, caramel flavours.
Once we decided how to best showcase the beans, we then start up the big roaster. We will run one batch to ensure we are moving in the right direction with, then we start making the many, many adjustments – thus the art of roasting. Once we've come up with the perfect roast for the bean, it’s time to bag!
Mirroring our passion for sourcing sustainable beans, Belching Barista’s full roasting process is entirely powered by Bullfrog Power, a Canadian green energy retailer offering green electricity from renewable resources (wind, solar, hydro), and natural gas from renewable resources (methane capture from manure and landfills). Through our adoption of the Bullfrog Power program, Belching Barista has brought together multiple businesses that are powered by Bullfrog Power to create our coffee.