Interview: Redroaster Coffee Roasters, Brighton
Q/ Tell us a bit about your coffee roasters...
Redroaster is Brighton's first and only organic certified specialty coffee roaster. Next year is our 20th year roasting so you can say we are the grandaddy of specialty coffee roasters in Brighton.
We work with many different origins but are around to work directly with farms in Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia and Rwanda. We are especially aligned toward Rwanda because we have been building a school in a little village called Musenyi for the last three years. It houses 660 primary school children. This year our focus will be on turning the old school into a hospital and starting an NHS doctors and Nurse exchange with the local clinic near our roastery.
Q/ What is your back story?
The founder of Redroaster Coffee Roasters went to Seattle back in the day and had a coffee in Victrola, next to Starbucks' reserve. He was blown away by the coffee and decided to roast specialty coffee in Brighton.
In the last few years we needed to update our brand so we spent some time travelling round the West coast of America and Australia. We were blown away by some of the cafes in Australia such as kettle Black and roasters such as Square One and Proud Mary. While we were there we met an amazing designer from Stella Collective who won Best International Cafe Design of the Year, got on really well and the rest is history. Although Redroaster prides itself in producing amazing food, coffee is always at the heart of the business.
Q/ What makes you independent? What would you say you're known for?
Redroaster has always been independently owned. We guess we are known for being the first, and so innovation and customer focus is always at the heart of what we do.
Q/ If you had to drink one single origin or blend for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Brazil - Our team all loves those typical chocolate nutty flavours, however there are so many exciting things happening in specialty coffee at the moment that if you want to have something a little more exotic, then the farmers we work with can certainly produce it.
Q/ Do you have a favourite roasters in the industry right now, and why?
Our favourite roaster at the moment is a young lady called Chloe from Mac and Me. We were at a roasting competition in London recently and all the key roasters were there and she won it. We all roasted the same coffee, but she turned a fairly ordinary coffee into a great coffee and that is really down to the skill of the roaster.
GUSTATORY (adjective): curating excellence in taste.