An interesting conversation with Francis Bratz-Lersch, one of the roasters and owner of We Roast Coffee in Berlin. 

Francis shares with us his opinion about Kenyan coffees, specialty coffee and what he likes about Wertkaffee.

 

Francis‘ Testimonial

Chris:

How did you get to coffee? What are you doing in the coffee value chain?

Francis:

First, I started my coffee career ten years ago in a coffee shop, and I loved coffee instantly. And I focused on the knowledge about coffee and how to get a coffee business. And what can I do for the specialty coffee scene? I’m a roaster at We Roast Coffee Berlin. I’m also the owner of We Roast Coffee Berlin. It’s a place where different brands are roasting their coffee, for example Ken the other guy is roasting there, and also I tried to establish specialty coffee with my own brand like the same name like the co-roasting space. And I tried to connect roasters. I try to connect baristas or interested persons who want to share knowledge and the community can have an exchange between the whole value chain, especially on the part of the value chain in Berlin and from green bean importers to the baristas, so the part between and yeah.

Chris:

What roaster are you currently roasting on?

Francis:

A five kilo Probat like this in Berlin.

Chris:

How many coffees are you roasting?

Francis:

Right now we have a range or a sortiment of around 12 coffees. Two of them are blended for especially the mainstream taste like nutty, chocolaty and for the B2B customers, and we have six high specialty coffees from the score, 84 to 88 points. But two of them are from Kenya.

Chris:

What were your expectations of Kenyan coffee?

Francis:

I had no expectations because I was not really into Kenyan coffee before, so I was very surprised. Kenyan coffees are so sweet and fruitiness are so balanced between the sweetness and the acidity. So the acidity is very smooth. Not very acrid, so more sweet berries and this kind of aroma. I really like that.

Chris:

You work together with Wertkaffee as a partner, how did you get to know them?

Francis:

To be honest, I can’t recognize because it was in the beginning of my business, and it was like I had so much to do. It just comes to me through Instagram, I don’t know. I liked the page, I liked something. I guess maybe I saw it on transparency coffee, the pledge, I don’t know, but could be.

Chris:

From the Kenyan coffees that you are roasting, what do you like so much about them?

Francis

So two parts or two topics: On the one hand I like the flavors, the aroma and on the other hand I like the project behind it, from Wertkaffee. I heard about the project from Crossroads, and it was like a good combination to sell specialty coffee because I in my opinion specialty coffee should be not only a good taste or a good flavor, it should be also sustainable. This wasn’t common, so I said, that’s it. I guess that’s the one, it’s a good project. I look for coffee from Africa and I took the Kenyan because I was into it. And right now I have the Kiriga AB from Kiriga estate. I guess so. And the AB Kiptebes.

Conversations with Christian Saak of Cabana Coffee Roasters. 

For Christian, it is important to get to know the people behind the coffee: importers and farmers. 

Christian says that Kenyan coffee can be compared to wine. Watch the video to find out why and what he likes about Wertkaffee. 

Christian’s Testimonial

Chris:

Christian, thank you for hosting as at your roastery. You are a roaster, maybe you can tell as how you got into coffee and what your current role is in the coffee supply chain?

Christian:

I started a business as a café with my wife in 2008, and first we were buying from a German like roaster from Hamburg, which was like, at that time, very rare because like most of the other places were going for industrial roasted coffees or coffees from Italy. And then like in 2012, 2014, we started traveling a bit, and we met some roasters in the States and also in Scandinavia.

So we got more involved in the like behind the roasting. So where does coffee come from and what differences are there in coffee? And that there are like different like varieties and different processes. And so we started getting more interested in that, and then we bought from smaller roasters like from micro roasteries. Then one day we thought, okay, maybe that’s something we can do on our own. It took a bit longer, so like in 2017, we started our own roastery, beside the coffee business. Now we’re like more roasters than café. I think in the coffee chain, we’re like trying to buy specialty coffees. We want to know the background of the coffees, and we want to be in contact with the people behind the coffee, like the people who bring the coffee to Europe and also the farmers and the people who work on the farm.

Chris:

What roaster are you roasting on?

Christian:

So on a Probat five kilo that we bought in 2017 and we for now like to roast very small batches for consistency and also because we have like eight different coffees at that time, we buy smaller lots and try to show people the variety of the coffee world and for now it’s like really good to roast on that one.

Chris:

So how many coffees are you roasting, and what is your main objective by the different types?

Christian:

As I said before, we now have coffees from eight different countries, and we try to show our customers the variety of coffees, differences and different countries where everybody comes from. And the process is like natural coffees or dried or washed coffees. And also what you can do, we have some coffees, we just have like an omniroast or a filter roast and some we also roast as an espresso so that you can like show also what you can do was the roasting to like change the flavors of coffee.

Chris:

Talking of Kenyan coffee, what is your experience, and what do you expect?

Christian:

The experience with Kenyan coffee is very good. I really like to roast the beans. So I think you can do a lot of variations within the roasting. And I think for me, Kenyan coffees are very comparable to wine. I think they have like this full body and like this really nice fruitiness but also like a bit of the mineral flavors. So always a nice acidity to them which like some people may not like or find difficult in coffee, but I mean it’s a fruit so it should taste a bit like it.

Chris:

And how do you roast Kenyan coffees?

Christian:

We have like a filter roast and an espresso roast which like the espresso is slightly darker. So we roast a bit longer, and we put in a bit more heat at the end of the roast so that we don’t destroy like the fruitiness and the sweetness of the coffee, but get a bit more body to like to get a nice espresso out of it.

Chris:

You have been working with Wertkaffee for the second year now. Do you remember how you got in contact with Wertkaffee for the first time?

Christian:

Actually, it was a good friend of mine, Sebastian. He suggested me to look into the coffees from Wertkaffee and last year it was kind of late for us to buy the Kenyan harvest. So we’re very lucky to find you. And we just got to, I think, taste like two or three different coffees. And also the coffee that we bought, we just tried the peep berry and we were like really amazed with the taste, so that we decided, okay, we buy the AA choice. After we roasted, we were very, very happy with it. And also the story behind the coffee was very interesting for us also to the project that merhwert kaffee is doing and also the project from Crossroads in Kenya. This year we found the quality even better than last year, so we hope that it continues, and we like can build up a strong relationship with you guys and yeah, keep on going!

Chris:

Whose producer’s coffee are you roasting at the moment?

Christian:

We bought the Ol’ochoy farm from Paul and his wife. We just met him today, and we were so lucky having them at our place at our roastery in Berlin. So it’s always nice to meet the people behind. And for now I couldn’t manage to go to Kenya, but I’m really looking forward to doing that next year to see them in action.

Ken Braz, the founder of August 63 in Berlin, sat down with us to talk about coffee: his beginnings and his favorite Wertkaffee coffee. 

Ken’s Testimonial

Chris:

How did you start your roastery, and how did it start that you started roasting?

Ken:

Basically, I’ve been working in coffee for quite some time. I think, I first started being very passionate about coffee, about drinking coffee, about seeing that there is like a very special community in coffee that there’s so many people sharing the same interests.

In the beginning, I always thought of an easy product such as coffee. But the more I learned about it, the more complex it got and the more interesting it and the more fascinating it got. That was a bit my motivation to actually start working in coffee. So when I did that, I first, of course, started to work as a barista behind the coffee bar. And I really got into that, like working with people, serving people and all this hospitality thing was something which really fascinated me because I love to talk, I love to host people, I love to especially talk about coffee because for me it’s super fascinating and the more I learned about that, the more I also wanted to learn about, okay, how does coffee actually react like or you get a green bean and how does that act because I was quite comfortable with, you know, doing coffee, installing a grinder and everything, like dialing in coffee. But I didn’t know much about roasting it. And it was basically when the pandemic started, when I actually really wanted to dig more into the roasting process. And I bought myself like a one kilo roaster. So I basically started roasting in my living room. I basically started to try out on yeah, how does this coffee react to and it was more like a hobby. It was not really planned that I’m actually gonna start like a little micro roastery project, whatever it was basically just to to learn and to start roasting with friends who are more into roasting. And so it’s still a process. I’m still learning so much every day of roasting different coffees. But that was basically it. And after I started roasting more and more, I let people try my coffees and the feedback was quite positive and people were really like: „Hey, you should definitely start selling them. You should definitely kind of like create a brand around it“. And that’s basically how everything started from the scratch.

Chris:

And what roaster are you roasting on?

Ken:

Now I’m roasting on a five kilo Probat. So still a very small roaster compared to other bigger roasteries. But it’s already a big step as I had the one I was roasting with before.

Chris:

How many coffees do you have?

Ken:

At the moment I have six different coffees because I really tried to showcase different origins, different processes of coffees, because as I already said, like coffee is quite complex and diverse

and the coffee from Kenya, for example, tastes way different than a coffee from Colombia or from Brazil. So that’s something I want to show my customers my community.

Chris:

What’s your expectation of Kenyan coffee?

Ken:

Kenyan coffee should be very vibrant when it comes to like yeah acidity and sweetness. It always has this nice florality to it, but coffee from Kenya, the ones who excite me the most are the ones who don’t typically taste like a Kenyan coffee, let’s say. Because when you have Kenyan coffees, the acidity and the fruitiness to it, always reminds a bit of like cherry tomato or like tomatoish things. Some Kenyan coffees which excite me the most, are the ones, who don’t necessarily taste like that, that they go a bit more maybe like a black tea direction, that they are pretty floral.

Chris:

Talking of Kenyan coffee, how did you get to know Wertkaffee in the process?

Ken:

Basically it was, I can’t remember, I think it was when I still had my coffee blog on Instagram, and I was kind of like digging in to the whole, okay, how they do the German coffee scene or the specialty coffee scene. And I think I was through Instagram and having some friends sharing coffees or sharing your story and the story behind Mehrwert Kaffee and that kind of excited me and fascinated in me that because there’s also something for me which is pretty important that coffee is not only a product but in coffee there’s so many people behind who basically, yeah, there is community behind. And that there’s actually an import company, per se, which doesn’t only import coffee and exchange, but create also an impact in the region.

Chris:

Talking of the coffees you have been buying from Wertkaffee, what was your experience?

Ken:

Quite positively, I’d say, because since I’m pretty new to also like roasting my own coffees and like not sourcing but basically searching for coffees that excite. Like last year I that was basically more like, let’s say, like not an S.O.S. situation. But when I started up my company, I got this spot at the Frankfurt Coffee Festival and then good boy Francis, from „WeRoastCoffeeCollective“, he was friendly to lend me some of his coffee because we had to act pretty quickly and that was the first time I had the Kiptebes. That was already a really, really nice coffee, and he also had another coffee. He also likes Kiriga and I really loved that coffee. And then this season or like last harvest actually is the first time I’m buying for myself from you guys the coffees and is actually going to be three different Kenyan coffees because they are all pretty different in taste and pretty exciting. Like there’s a Kenya AB and a Kenya AA and there’s also going to be a natural. So I’m really excited to get my hands on that and to showcase people how different those three coffees can taste from each other. I’m probably starting on creating this like little box of like this discovery set, or I don’t know yet, but that’s something which immediately came into my mind to like showcase how exciting Kenyan coffees can actually taste.

German Roast Master Benjamin Pozsgai, the owner of Benson Coffee, started his journey in the coffee world 10 years ago. Benjamin tells us how he started this journey. 

You can find out what he expects from Kenyan coffee and what he likes about Wertkaffee in this video.

 

Benjamin’s Testimonial

Chris:

Benjamin, I wanted to ask you how you came into coffee and how do you perceive your current role in the coffee supply chain? What’s your current role in the supply chain?

Ben:

I came to coffee ten years ago by just being not too much happy with the other stuff I worked till then and somehow I figured out, that coffee is very interesting and so interesting to me that I think I could imagine to work with it for more than the next five years or so. So it gave me somehow a perspective, even if I was totally new. Like I had a coffee machine at home, but that was pretty much it. And I was just, yeah, I was just interested in how everything works and stuff like that. And in Cologne there were already a couple of roasteries so I just went there and introduced myself and said I want to work there. And it worked out that I started working there. My current role in the supply chain, well, I’m a roaster, I buy green coffee and I sell roasted coffee.

Chris:

What’s the roaster that you are roasting on currently?

Ben:

On a Probat 12 kilo roaster.

Chris:

And how many coffees do you have?

Ben:

How many different green coffees I have? Maybe 12, 13. And it depends, but maybe something about.

Chris:

And for Kenyan coffee, what’s your expectation of coffee from Kenya?

Ben:

My expectation of Kenyan coffee?

I think my expectation is a very clean cup, a very sweet cup and cup with a lot of fruits going on there. I think when I started drinking coffee, it was mainly SL-varieties. So they had, in my opinion, a very strong blackcurrant flavor, which I totally love and like. And I think in the last years when the green coffees were more mixed varietals, I still find this in the cup, but not that present mostly at coffees that I cup.

But there are other flavors. I just need to understand that the SL-variety is not yielding very well. I didn’t know about that till when I was in Kenya for the first time. And they just told me that Batian is just better for the harvest because you get just out more, more output, so to say.

Yeah, I think it’s a coffee I would recommend for filter and maybe for cold brew.

Chris:

How did you find out about Wertkaffee?

Ben:

I once got I don’t know if it was even by mail or email, I don’t know, I think Jörn of Wertkaffee, once got in contact with me many years ago and then we found out about each other. And that’s how it started, yes.

Chris:

And what do you like about coffees from Wertkaffee?

Ben:

I think it has the direct trade approach, which you find in other countries more easily, I think. And for Kenya, it was maybe except of one other project I knew about. Back then it was hard to get good coffees that were traceable and you knew what’s going on there and who the producers were and stuff like that.

So yeah, it’s nice to to have the contact to the producer in the end and to know what they are about and where they’re located and stuff like that.

Chris:

So which coffee from Kenya are you currently roasting or looking forward to receive?

Ben:

Yeah, at the moment I don’t have any coffees from Kenya, but we picked the Meteitei lot. I liked it very much at the cupping this year so yeah, that’s the coffee we’re looking forward to.