Finding the Perfect Bean and the Ideal Roast

At its core, Red Horse Coffee Traders is all about the beans. What distinguishes world-class coffee beans from mediocre ones is the regions where the coffee beans are sourced from; their soil, climate, and how they are grown.

The couple relates a story about how coffee might have been discovered by Ethiopian goats. As the story goes, the goats used to become rather energetic after consuming raw coffee berries. Over time, Ethiopians noticed this phenomenon and started developing ways of drying the berries, extracting the beans, roasting, and grinding them to craft fantastic drinks. By the 6th century, the Ethiopians had become so good at producing coffee beans that they started to export their delightful products to Turkey.

In the last two decades, coffee has become more of a luxury commodity, and coffee drinkers have refined their tastes and politics concerning the beans’ origin and the growing techniques. The owners of Red Horse Coffee Traders only purchase fair trade, shade-grown, and organic coffee beans. One of the fantastic things about shade-grown coffee is that it is grown in a more natural environment–terraces instead of coffee trees–which ensures that the coffee plant grows without any stress.

One of the main challenges that the owners of the Red Horse Coffee Traders have experienced is finding the specific coffee beans that they like. For example, obtaining the White Nile–a coffee bean sourced from Uganda–became quite risky when a civil war erupted in the country. The 2004 Asian tsunami damaged a significant part of the continent’s infrastructure, and it became quite a challenge to access Sumatra beans.

Another challenge in the coffee trade is the rapidly increasing cost of coffee beans year after year. Various factors affect the coffee market, such as natural disasters, politics, shipping costs, and world economies. Finding good beans is just half of the job; the other half comprises finding the ideal roast. Red Horse Coffee Traders prefer using the Sivetz roaster since it lifts and blows around the coffee beans creating a temperature that is even around all the coffee beans. They roast each batch of coffee beans for a standard period of time, with the only variation being in the temperature. Various beans create various flavors when roasted at various temperatures, while some are roasted best at a single standard temperature.

Through the years, the Red Horse Coffee Traders have perfected the art of roasting coffee beans mostly through research and experimentation, as well as sampling and testing. To sample the establishment’s delights, you can drop by the establishment any day from Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sundays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. However, you should note that due to its popularity, the Red Horse Coffee Traders is usually fully-packed by locals and tourists. Therefore you might want to head a little early to find the best spot. The Red Horse Coffee Traders is one of the town’s most popular hangouts for having breakfast and lunch. They pride themselves in using as many non-GMO, organic, and locally sourced ingredients as possible.