Buying roasted coffee beans isn’t a particularly difficult process, but there are a number of things you need to look for to ensure that you can find the best and most delicious beans available on the market.
But what should you look for in roasted coffee beans before making a selection? Well, to make your life easier, we reveal four things to specifically check before buying coffee beans that will help you out. We also introduce you to Kingha’s ethical roasted coffee beans and explain how you can buy them in Canada right now.
Origin
A good starting point when buying roasted coffee beans is the origin of the coffee itself. In other words, where was it grown? Granted, it’s easy enough to find out which country the beans were grown in, but can you trace the coffee to a specific coffee-growing region within a country?
Knowing a coffee’s origin is helpful as it guides your decision-making process and enables you to pick beans that have a particular taste profile or because you’re keen to support growers in a specific nation.
Kingha’s coffee is single origin, meaning that we grow and buy it from farmers in a small community in southwestern Uganda.
Roast profile
Coffee taste is subjective, and everyone likes something different in their morning brew. While some opt for bright, fruity flavors, others prefer something a little more intense.
Therefore, it’s a good idea to check the roast profile to find out what types of flavors you can expect from the roasted coffee beans that you’re about to buy.
Helpfully, you can discern the roast profile of beans by checking the description given by the roaster. Take our naturally processed Kigezi Mountains single-origin coffee as an example. You can expect a jammy sweetness alongside crisp acidity and burnt toffee notes.
If this sounds like the morning brew of your dreams (and why wouldn’t it?), then be sure to check out your roasted coffee beans buying options via our online store!
Roast date
It’s also a good idea to consider when a coffee was roasted before buying it. In the world of coffee roasting, the fresher, the better. You don’t want to be drinking coffee that was roasted a year ago, as the taste is going to be disappointing, to say the least.
Coffee that has been roasted within the month is a good bet as it is fresh, delicious, and sure to meet your expectations. At Kingha, we roast our coffee in small batches to ensure its freshness and to guarantee that you can expect great things when you first open the bag to experience the delicious aromas!
If you can’t find details about a coffee’s roast date on the website, be sure to drop the roaster an email and ask the question directly.
Ethics
There’s a fair amount of malpractice in the coffee industry, so as a consumer, you need to make sure that you choose to buy roasted coffee beans from ethical brands.
The reality is that “ethical” means different things to different coffee companies, but you can investigate a brand’s processes and commitments to get a feel for how ethical their coffee actually is.
At Kingha, we invest heavily in the entire coffee journey, ensuring that we pay our growers fairly for their produce. We also re-invest some of our profits into the coffee communities in which we work in Uganda to support future generations of growers.
You can find out more about what ethics means to Kingha here.
Sustainability
In our modern world, sustainability within the coffee industry is also important. Like ethics, sustainability can mean different things to different people.
From our viewpoint, sustainability is all about doing what we can in the present to ensure that growers in the future can continue producing outstanding coffee.
We put on extensive workshops in Uganda to educate growers about sustainable practices and also fund educational projects in rural Uganda to invest in the growers of tomorrow.
Without sustainability, the coffee industry would be in trouble, so it’s vital that we all do our bit to help growers long into the future.
Introducing Kingha’s roasted coffee beans
We’re so thrilled to be able to share our roasted coffee beans with you now that our shipment has arrived from Uganda. Via our White Rock Roastery, we can now supply coffee drinkers across Canada with some of the finest African coffee from our smallholder farms.
Grown at 1950 meters up in the Kigezi mountains, in the small village of Mpungu, our exceptional single-origin coffee comes from our partner farmer Vicent Butamanya’s 20-acre coffee farm.
Vicent’s coffee farm lies at the end of a long and winding road way up in the mountains. Reaching his farm and getting his coffee cherries down the mountain presents some significant logistical challenges, but ones we are happy to overcome to bring you this exceptional coffee from an exceptional farmer.
You can now buy our roasted coffee beans directly from our online store. We have natural, washed, and even greencoffee available for you to try at great prices.
Keep up to date with news from our Ugandan estate by following our blog, and be sure to check out our Instagram page for regular updates from Uganda.