Our Story
Our mission is to craft the most delicious, environmentally friendly, and ethically sourced cup of coffee you’ve ever had. In order to do this, we exclusively roast Fair Trade, Organic, Single-Origin, specialty coffees on a fluid bed "hot air" roaster. We then deliver all of our Newport News, VA orders for FREE by bicycle. For your convenience, we also ship all over the globe.
Origin
When Heath visited a coffee plantation during his first trip to Costa Rica in 1999, a love affair was born. Shortly after returning to the States, his journey with coffee formally began when he started working for a coffee roaster in Richmond, VA. Several years later, he discovered a much better way to roast coffee...fluid bed roasting. He had the good fortune to work alongside one of Connecticut's premier roasters on an original Sivetz fluid bed roaster. As soon as the opportunity arose, Heath put these lessons to work in creating fennario coffee roasters. Ever since, his mission has been to craft the most delicious, environmentally friendly, and ethically sourced cup of coffee you’ve ever had.
Fair Trade, Organic,
Single Origin
Fairtrade is a system of certification that aims to ensure a set of standards are met in the production and supply of a product or ingredient. For farmers and workers, Fairtrade means workers' rights, safer working conditions and fairer pay. For shoppers it means high quality, ethically produced products.
Organic practices encourage a more sustainable and natural environment and they support long-term health by avoiding toxins and dangerous chemicals that we may otherwise ingest or absorb. Coffee can be called organic if it's certified to have been grown in soil that had no prohibited substances applied for three years prior to harvest. Prohibited substances include most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Single Origin coffees are traceable. This means that you know exactly where your coffee is from and that it’s a specific coffee, not a blend. Usually of a higher quality, it’s the acknowledgment that the coffee is from a particular farm located in a unique setting, while its flavor depicts its origin, possessing characteristics of that specific area where the particular coffee was grown.
Fluid Bed Roasting
We use a fluid bed roaster. Unlike traditional drum roasting, fluid bed roasters use convection/hot air to roast the beans. Invented in the 1970's by Michael Sivetz, this style of roasting has several benefits. For all the coffee/tech/gear geeks out there, check out Mr. Sivetz's article comparing drum and fluid bed roasters here:
https://www.coffeechemistry.com/comparing-drum-to-hot-air-fluid-bed-roasters
1) Healthier. According to Sivetz, in a drum roaster, the chaff that comes off the beans remains in the drum and quickly carbonizes. This forms numerous carcinogens, resulting in a less healthy, more bitter cup of coffee. The hot air in our fluid bed roaster forces out the chaff, as well as other contaminants, that might otherwise burn into the beans.
2) More Consistent. Another benefit of air roasting is the ability to accurately sense the digital bean temperature with a thermocouple. With this information, the degree of roast is known at all times, and we can easily adjust the settings for different degrees of roast and offer accurate reproducibility. This results in a more consistent roast every single time.
3) Better for the Environment. Because roasting time is much shorter than when using a drum roaster, fluid bed roasters not only reduce energy usage, but also the formation of negative acidic compounds that can make coffee taste bitter or cause stomach irritation.
All of this results in the best tasting, healthiest, and most environmentally friendly cup of coffee you've ever had!
