Tane Coffee Collective, founded in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, is a roastery that in its relatively short life has already had to adapt and readapt multiple times. Their coffee is truly delicious and beautifully roasted, so lucky us that they are going strong.
Meet Dick, one of the founders of Tane Coffee Collective, and read more about their journey.
---
Thank you so much for being a part of the Swerl Coffee Club.
Who are you guys that founded Tane?
- We originally founded the company with 6 people with different backgrounds - from a professor in chemistry, a satellite engineer, and a flight leader in Brussels airport to the former head roaster of the Barn Berlin, the owner of one of Leuven’s first specialty bars and a graduate student with a love for green coffee processing. We officially started the company 2 weeks before the first lockdown in Belgium in the infamous year of 2020.
When and how did Tane start?
- The goal was to create a cooperative company where our clients would be part owner in order to co-decide what new coffees we would source and roast. We would provide brewing information and brewing techniques to anyone, organise coffee and roasting workshops and create a small community of coffee enthusiasts with a common goal: share the beauty and potential of specialty coffee.
What are your plans for 2022?
- We have put a lot of research in getting a sustainable solution for our packaging in 2021. The bottles (which one might recognise from another specialty roaster too) are made of 100% recycled PET and are meant to be used as much as possible. We provide refills on our website which we ship in certified homecompostable bags. In theory the PETpackers can be re-used hundreds of times, but we saw however, that by having a different label for each coffee, people wanted to have that new label on their PETpackers. So our goal to reduce waste was not being met. As such we are going to create 3-4 fixed labels and provide the coffee info on a small sticker which is shipped with the refills. This way we only use about 1/10th of the amount of material (which is recyclable, but still).
All of the coffees we tried from you were excellent - what is your past experience in coffee?
- We were taught how to roast by Jasper who has gained a myriad of experience with specialty roasteries in New Zealand, Australia and Germany. Kris, who is currently roasting the coffees and was also taught by Joanna Alm, has been owner of Noir coffeebar in Leuven for almost 10 years. Dick has worked with coffee in every step of the value chain (from green processing to importing and serving) - though his latte art sucks, he can still slurp the loudest during cuppings (for which he, weirdly enough, feels some sense of pride).
KII AA - KENYA
Country: Kenya
Region: Kirinyaga
Producer: Kii Factory
Process: Washed
Variety: SL28, SL34, Batian
Perched high up in the southern foothills of Mount Kenya on rich red volcanic soil, the areas surrounding the Kii factory are ideal for producing some of the finest Kenyan coffee.
Farmers in these fertile foothills who typically cultivate around 250 coffee trees on half-acre plots have been delivering cherry to the Kii factory, which is one of 3 factories managed by an umbrella farmers’ cooperative society (FCS) called the Rungeto Farmers’ Cooperative Society.
Smaller in size than other FCS, Rungeto has focused on quality processing and meticulous attention to detail, garnering it a reputation for amazing coffee and some of the cleanest and best organized factories in Kenya.
At the Kii factory only the ripest cherries are delivered, and additional hand sorting and floating is done to remove less dense and damaged beans before the coffee is depulped, fermented and washed. After the coffee is washed, it’s soaked in fresh water for long periods of time to solidify the hallmark Kenyan profiles.
The coffee is dried over a period of two weeks on raised beds, which are carefully constructed to ensure proper air circulation and temperature control for optimal drying.
How to brew it? You can find this information on the package.
MARVIN BARRANTES
Country: Costa Rica
Region: Alajuela
Producer: Marvin Barrantes
Process: Honey
Variety: Caturra
Marvin’s farm is 8 hectares. To enable his production of single-variety lots, Marvin has divided his land to cultivate varieties separately.
Marvin established his milling operating in 2012 with only a small pulper and some raised beds. While honey processing is expensive, Marvin explained that the short distance from his fields to his mill, and his ability to capture the value from the processing stage, makes it possible for him to produce this excellent coffee.
Cherry is selectively handpicked by Marvin and his family and pulped on Marvin’s ecopulpers. They then lay parchment and mucilage on drying beds. Coffee sundries for approximately 20 days.
Once dry, Marvin brings his parchment to Hacienda Sonora, where coffee is stored, dry milled and prepared for export.
How to brew it? You can find this information on the package.
Thank you for sharing January with us and the featured roasters. It is always a pleasure preparing each month's coffee delivery!
