Coffee | Artisan roasters throughout Quebec

Artisanal roasters who advocate transparency, fairness and custom cooking of each batch of beans are now popping up across the province, from Sherbrooke to Arvida. Our journalists present three portraits of new players in specialty coffee in Quebec.

Eve Dumas
The Press

Emilie Cote
The Press

Café PS: the pioneers

Café PS was born from the good relations between the importer of green coffee Semilla and the Club social PS, located under the pizzeria Elena, in the Saint-Henri district. As big fans of coffee roasted just right, Brendan Adams (Semilla) and Ryan Gray (Nora Gray, Elena and Gia) decided that they would never be better served than by themselves.

The new partners have therefore set up their roasting workshop at the back of Mr. Gray and Associates’ new restaurant, the very popular Gia, which opened just before the holidays. But the chief roaster, Patrick Latreille (also co-owner of Semilla), had already been at work, on the equipment of the Canadian Roasting Company, for a good year. Regulars at Club Social PS and La Finca café, among others, could taste his work. Today, around ten establishments serve Café PS.

If the mission of the import company Semilla is to allow small coffee producers from Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Rwanda to access the international market and receive a better price for their precious beans, that of PS is to bring its customers closer to the source.

As you read these lines, Brendan Adams and Patrick Latreille have just returned from Guatemala and Honduras where they visited their partner farms and unearthed others. They come back with their heads full of stories. These are then told to customers like Keaton Ritchie, buyer of the Larry’s group (restaurant and butcher), who has his coffee roasted by PS. The coffee professional and sommelier can then relay the information to his staff, then to the customers of his establishment, many of whom are concerned to know what they are buying.

As in the world of wine and in many other contexts, the consistency of the relationship between two well-meaning parties can go a long way and open the eyes of consumers. Coffee is an agricultural environment in which the majority of workers are far from receiving a fair price. PS wants to remedy this, on the still small scale which is its own.

From the coffee addict’s point of view, what is remarkable about PS is its way of communicating as simply as possible, both the transparency of its approach and its tasting notes for each coffee. A mixture called “apple pie” because its infusion is reminiscent of apple and spices? Why not ? If it can help the drinker to better navigate the sometimes sharp world of specialty coffee, everyone is a winner.

Géogène: shine around Sherbrooke

Sherbrooke — Géogène, the proud micro-roaster of Sherbrooke, is growing, so much so that it will open a new branch in May in Magog. This is without counting a café-refreshment project and its two take-out counters: one in the university district of Sherbrooke and the other at the Cantons Brasse microbrewery in Orford.

However, it was at the “headquarters” of Géogène, the day of a terrible snowstorm, that we met entrepreneur Samuel Lessard-Beaupré.

For him, it was important to be settled “in the East”—as we say in Sherbrooke—where he grew up. For nearly 10 years, he ran a neighborhood café there, Le Tassé, which was not a foregone conclusion in this less busy — even unpopular — corner of town.

Wanting to take his interest in the third wave even further, Samuel Lessard-Beaupré sold Le Tassé to found Géogène around 2015. His goal? Producing premium coffee with maximum control of taste and supply chain, while limiting the environmental impact of each step. Initially, roasting was done “in an ultra-traditional way” with a small sample oven, then with equipment from Café-Vrac, whose owners are Bruno Lamarche and Nancy Doucet. “I owe them a lot. They modified their oven for us,” he says.

Quickly, Géogène built up a loyal clientele of restaurateurs (Baumann, Antidote FoodLab) and even subscribers. It hasn’t even been two years since Géogène has had a headquarters on King Street East with a used and refurbished Diedrich roaster — bought in Ontario — which is at the center of the open area where customers are welcomed. This exposes the most important value of the company: “transparency”.

Géogène is experiencing strong growth. If Samuel Lessard-Beaupré is the one who likes to lend himself to the game of interviews the most, he emphasizes that Géogène could not exist without his two faithful associates, Guillaume Isabelle and Pascal Boisvert.

Samuel Lessard-Beaupré would like to see more microroasters collaborate, as microbreweries do. For special roasts, but also to fill containers together and import green coffee beans directly to Guatemala or Ethiopia without going through a supplier.

“It’s rare, collaborations in the field of coffee. We did one with Binocle and we’re going to do one with Jungle. We really want to develop that. »

In the meantime, the Géogène team is preparing to open its branch in Magog, rue Principale. His Café-Buvette — which will be called Bernache when it officially opens in May — is already welcoming customers in a cute little place in the residential district of Vieux-Nord, rue Prospect, but it lacks a liquor license, which cannot delay. “We want it to be unpretentious,” insists Samuel Lessard-Beaupré.

His ambitions? “Shining around Sherbrooke. »

It’s gone well.

Arvida Roasting Co: micro-roasting in Saguenay

Arvida Roasting Co is the first specialty microroaster in… Saguenay. Why a name in English then?

Its co-founder Celia Meighen-McLean is born and raised in the area, she said. “People don’t know it, but there is a great Anglophone heritage here. Both my parents are from Arvida. »

Arvida is also the diminutive of the name of the man who founded the city – now merged with Jonquière – in 1926, Arthur Vining Davis, when he was president of the Aluminum Company of America.

Celia Meighen-McLean studied administration at HEC Montréal before returning to study regional development in Saguenay. She then met Vincent Lessard — a mining engineer — in Baie-James.

The two lovers took a trip to Costa Rica in 2015. “We were in the Dota Valley and we saw coffee trees in bloom. We became aware of the origin of coffee. »

For Celia Meighen-McLean, it was a revelation. Soon after, the business start-up advisor went to volunteer in Indonesia (the world’s fourth largest coffee producer). “I met microroasters and farmers,” she says.

Vincent Lessard and she then had the crazy project of becoming the first specialty microroaster in Saguenay. “At first, it was more of a hobby, but I had the background to go into business in a market that isn’t mature like Montreal or Quebec. »

Initially, the couple bought a very small coffee roaster – installed in a garage – and took roasting lessons in Vermont, at the International School of Coffee in Waterbury.

Arvida Roasting Co has a storefront in Jonquière, on boulevard du Royaume. The company is a signatory of the “Pledge”, the common code for the transparency of coffee purchases.

Its beans come from Nicaragua, Colombia, Brazil and Honduras. “We are open two days a week and we do online sales, but we are partners of a café that opened last week in Chicoutimi. »

Its name: Café Mathéo, located in the charming rue Racine.

“It will allow us to meet people and promote specialty coffee,” says Celia, who is also looking after a 4-month-old baby.

In Montreal, several Starbucks branches have closed in recent years. But others have opened throughout the provinces, including two in Saguenay.

For Celia Meighen-McLean, this is proof that even more people will be interested in specialty coffees first, and then they will want to encourage local roasters.

Celia Meighen-McLean believes that micro-roasting can take its place in Saguenay, as microbrewers and microdistillers have done.

Coffee from Arvida Roasting Co can be purchased at Helico in Montreal and at the Société des cafés in Quebec. You can also order online.