BEAR COFFEE ROASTERS LLC
MIAMI GARDENS, FLORIDA

What we buy and how we buy is at the center of our core business. We believe a business has a responsibility to its supply chain to do things the right way. And we believe profoundly that there is indeed a right way and a wrong way to conduct business. We relentlessly taste and evaluate coffees, then we meet our producers at the source to understand how they farm and treat their crops. We follow this high-intensity purchasing model because it is the only way to ensure quality, stability, and responsibility throughout the supply chain. Some countries maintain complex coffee growing and trading strictures. In these countries it is not only difficult to find good coffee, but also difficult to help the small-holders farmers export their product. In these countries we work with local green coffee buyers who expertly maneuver through the unique bureaucratic and governmental requirements of their respective country. These key people keep us up to date with their country's trade regulations and farming and coffee processing practices. These individuals also serve as our local quality control. A few of our coffees, like our Sumatran, are purchased from U.S. based importing companies. These are special coffees that contribute to the variety our customers have grown to love, but we can only access through intermediary coffee importers. Our importers have built and maintained transparent relationships with farms that are otherwise impossible to reach. We are very selective with which importers we use, making sure they adhere to the same standards as our Farm and Origin Sourced coffees. Like wine, every decision made during the coffee manufacturing process affects the finished product. Our head roaster experts roast the green beans according to carefully refined flavour profiles, bringing out the aromas and characteristics of the bean in question. Once they pass further rigorous taste tests, the roasted beans are either ground for use in all coffee makers or packaged whole. Roasting coffee transforms the chemical and physical properties of green coffee beans into roasted coffeeproducts. The roasting process is what produces the characteristic flavor of coffee by causing the green coffee beans to change in taste. Unroasted beans contain similar if not higher levels of acids, protein, sugars, and caffeine as those that have been roasted, but lack the taste of roasted coffee beans due to the Maillard and other chemical reactions that occur during roasting. The most popular, but probably the least accurate, method of determining the degree of roast is to judge the bean's color by eye. As the coffee absorbs heat, the color shifts to yellow and then to increasingly darker shades of brown. During the later stages of roasting, oils appear on the surface of the bean. The roast will continue to darken until it is removed from the heat source. Coffee also darkens as it ages, making color alone a poor roast determinant. Most roasters use a combination of temperature, smell, color, and sound to monitor the roasting process. Once the beans have been dried, and the outer layers of the cherry are removed or “milled” from the green coffee beans, a sample is shipped to Bear Coffee Roasters who analyse flavours, aromas, aftertaste, acidity and body. Once approved, the green coffee is sorted for appearance and density before the beans begin their five-week sea journey to the Florida. The pre-shipment approval is just one of at least four tasting sessions (or in coffee terminology, cuppings) that a coffee will go through on its journey to your cup. It will also be tasted when the ship arrives in the our roaster store, when each batch is delivered from the warehouse to the roastery, and finally a sample is taken from production to ensure that the finished product is as extraordinary as it should be. • BEAR COFFEE ROASTERS •