Propeller Coffee

Quality

Propeller only buys from the most experienced and knowledgeable farmers because they produce the highest quality specialty beans. These coffees taste incredible, are tough to find but are worth the extra effort. We then dedicate ourselves to making certain every batch of coffee we roast meets or exceeds the standards our customers have come to trust. To do this we cup and analyse every batch! 

Sustainability

At every step in the process, we take the extra steps to make our coffee the most sustainable it can possibly be: we maintain direct trade relationships; roast our beans using energy efficient approaches in our low footprint roastery; use biodegradable packaging for our coffee and offset our transportation with Bullfrog’s bio-diesel program.

Community 

We care deeply about the people we work with, the industry we work in and the communities we live in. We believe in putting social and environmental impact right alongside company profits and using business as a force for good. Through events such as Chefs for Change to benefit Community Food Centers of Canada, Greasy Spoon Diner series to benefit Sistering and A better Life Foundation and reduced rates for non-profit events as well as coffee donation programs, we give back to the community that has given so much to us. 

Well thought, well grown, well roasted. 

Sourcing

Finding unique, high quality coffees is a never-ending quest for us. Every coffee we buy must be chosen through a meticulous selection process. An inspection of the unroasted (green) beans is done to check for any visible defect such as insect damage, black beans, sour beans, broken beans or foreign matter. This rules out a lot of coffees - upwards of 80% of the worlds coffees are poor quality and exhibit all sorts of defects that would never make the cut for us. If the sample passes this first test we will lightly roast 100 grams of it in our sample roaster. Then we will cup this sample according to SCAA cupping protocols. The purpose of cupping is to test for quality and flavour. We score all samples using SCAA cupping forms and on the cupping app Catador. If a coffee meets all our criteria (free of defects, & has good acidity, body, balance and sweetness) and scores high enough, we will consider purchasing it. 

Roast Profile Development

We get asked the question “what style do you roast your coffee” quite often.

Each coffee is unique. Different varietals of coffee, growing regions, growing conditions, bean densities & moisture content all contribute different taste character to a coffee and require different roasting profiles. We roast with the end goal of unlocking all of each coffee's full potential. 

Roasting

Using a piece of roasting software called Cropster, we record every single batch of coffee that we roast on our Loring SmartRoaster. We use this collection of roast profiles a bit like a recipe book for coffee. When a new coffee arrives we first do a bit of homework to figure out a good initial recipe/profile to use on this coffee. We measure the moisture content and density, then check the bean varietal, growing conditions and elevation, and then search our recipe book for a coffee that we’ve previously roasted that is similar to this new coffee. We will roast the coffee, then cup/taste it and discuss how we can tweak the roast profile to develop it to its full potential.