FAQ

Utterly Wilde Coffee is 100% certified organic. This means none of our chosen beans have been grown with synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers.

Mostly! The outer part of our current bags is kraft paper, which certainly is recyclable. The bags do have a silver lining, made of aluminium foil, which is not recyclable in all areas at present. This packaging is what keeps the beans fresh for our customers for as long as possible. As the business grows, I am seeking some larger batches of custom printed bags and am striving to make them more ‘cutting-edge’ and 100% recyclable and planet-friendly.

As things stand, we are using a small (1kg per roast) high-tech, electrically-powered induction roaster. Many roasters use burning butane/propane gas as their source of heat. This produces lots of exhaust gases from its burning to generate the heat energy, and isn’t very efficient at being transferred to the beans. Our roaster, which will ultimately be fully powered by solar-generated electricity, uses 25% of the energy a gas powered roaster would use to roast the same weight of beans.

Our roastery is currently located in a Food Safe facility at an ALR acreage which grows organic food products. Additionally, it has its own array of solar panels and feeds extra electricity back into the grid. We are able to walk to the work site every day, so as to minimise the use of fuel to drive there.

Thankfully, the court case for compensation following the crash that changed my life back in 2019 finally completed this year and gave us sufficient funds to buy a new house (which does actually neighbour with ALR land!) with space we can convert into a dedicated Food Safe roastery. I will fit solar panels as per my plan and continue using small, energy-efficient, cutting-edge roasters for small artisan roasts.

Yes. The two main species of bean producing plant in the Coffea genus which are traded are Arabica (approximately 2/3 sales) and Robusta (approximately 1/3).

Utterly Wilde Coffee only uses Arabica beans—a denser, more aromatic, smoother and all-around premium coffee bean. In other words, it’s the queen of beans.

Our Arabica beans grow at higher altitudes and are shade-grown. This means they’re not under direct sunlight and are grown under a canopy of trees, creating a more biodiverse environment. This is a really good thing for wildlife, plants, and people!

These frequently asked questions are ones we love to answer! Our coffee beans currently largely come from South America (Peru, Colombia and Brazil) and Central America (Guatemala and Mexico) with a single variety from the origin of coffee in Africa (Ethiopia). These current beans came through a local BC supplier, Root 86 Coffee, from their organic selection.

Our organic Peruvian Ninth Life beans have been process using the Swiss Water Process which is actually done here near Vancouver. Our upcoming organic Mexican Press Paws beans are decaffeinated in Mexico by Descamex using the Mountain Water Process. Both processes are chemical-free and use only water, temperature and time to gently remove 99.9% of the caffeine.

Coffee blends have a mix of beans in them, curated to offer a distinct taste and flavour profile. If the beans are mixed before roasting, the blend is referred to as a pre-roast blend. If mixed after roasting, it’s called a post-roast blend. Some beans absorb energy at different rates to each other when roasting. This means that a combination can react differently to certain roast profiles than they would individually.

At this stage of our business, we currently don’t have our own blend combinations. But the beauty of a small roaster is the ability to roast requested combinations ‘to order’. So if you know of a particular combination of our current beans that works, or you’d like to try, please contact us to ask.

Coffee oils are naturally brought out during the roasting process. The darker the roast, the more likely the beans are to release their oils. This is because they’re exposed to higher temperatures and usually roasted for very slightly longer. Which in turn brings more natural oils to the coffee bean’s surface. On medium and dark roasts, this is why more oils can be seen.

All our beans are great for brewing espresso, we think. Brew methods (the same as roast levels!) very much depend on personal and individual taste.

We love our Decent espresso machine which can only be bought from their website, but we also use our AeroPresses and French Press too, when the need arises.

It all depends on your chosen brewing method (e.g. drip, filter, espresso, French press) and how much coffee you use. Generally speaking… one double shot (2 oz/60 ml) of espresso has about 80mg of caffeine. One cup (12 oz/350 ml) of drip coffee has about 140mg of caffeine.

Our decaffeinated beans are organic and have gone through the Swiss Water Process. This is a chemical-free process that uses only water, temperature, and time to gently remove 99.9% of the caffeine. Decaf that uses 2 tbsp of ground coffee to 8 oz (236 ml) of water will yield about 0.08 mg of caffeine per cup. By comparison, a regular cup of normal drip coffee has 120 mg of caffeine per cup.

Firstly, don’t store coffee in the freezer! Upon removal, very cold beans just encourage warmer room air to condense water onto them increasing the rate at which they can go stale. And definitely do not store next to anything with a strong aroma, such as garlic. Strong smells can be absorbed by the coffee, thereby affecting its flavour and own smell.

Ideally, keep coffee beans in a sealed container, vacuum if available. However, a sealed bag in a cool, dark cupboard away from sunlight is sufficient.

Follow this advice and the coffee should stay fresh for several weeks.

Definitely not. The flavours in our coffee are all natural and come from both the origin of the bean (ie. country it is grown in and how it is processed after harvesting) and to what level it is roasted. Why spoil a good thing?

The flavours listed on the label are just ‘Cupping Notes’ which are a set of standardized descriptors used to create a sensory-rich picture of the coffee during a formal cupping, or tasting process. Coffee cupping is similar to wine tasting: a professional practice of observing tastes and aromas of a coffee to determine how it ‘cups’. It involves smelling the coffee for an ‘aroma’ description, moving it around the mouth for ‘mouthfeel’ and ‘body’, and then slurping it to aerate the brew and give ’taste’. All these help determine characteristics of the coffee.

When it comes to coffee, “acidity” is a term used to describe its taste. This is a positive trait, a brightness picked up by the tip of the tongue. Bright, lively and sweet are all words often used to describe the acidity of a coffee’s taste profile. Usually, a coffee’s acidity is balanced by its body, aroma, and flavour.

If the sealed bag is unopened, beans hold their freshness for at least three months after roasting. All our bags are sealed as soon as possible after being filled and all have a de-gassing valve so any gas released by the bean can escape without the risk of exploding bags!

To find out when a bag of beans was roasted, check out the hand-written date on the front label, scribed during roasting, just prior to bagging.