Crop to cup
From the farm to your cup
Every bag we sell has been through a long journey before it reaches you. Here is the whole of it, from a tree on a Colombian hillside to the roaster on Kerr Street.
It starts in Colombia
Around 550,000 families grow coffee in Colombia. It is woven into how the country sees itself, a source of real national pride, and the knowledge behind it has been passed down through generations of the same families.
All of it is arabica, and the country is big and varied enough that coffee from one region can taste drastically different from another. Altitude, soil, rainfall and climate all change from one growing area to the next, and the cup changes with them. That range is why we can offer the breadth we do while buying from a single country.
We are not married to one farm. We are married to quality.Juan, co-founder
We keep the standard fixed and let the farms change to meet it. Each season we take in samples from a range of growers and choose from what is actually in front of us.
The journey, stop by stop
Coffee is checked, sorted and graded at every stage.
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On the farm
Picking, by hand, one cherry at a time
Coffee does not ripen all at once. On the same tree on the same day there will be fruit that is ready and fruit that is weeks away. Pickers go through by hand and take only what is ripe, leaving the rest on the branch to keep maturing for later harvests.
It is slow, skilled work, and it is the first step on the journey.
Check 1 · only ripe fruit is taken -
On the farm
Depulped, washed and dried
A coffee bean is the seed of a fruit. The outer pulp has to come off, and then the beans are washed.
Washing does more than clean them, because water sorts the beans for you. Anything that has not matured properly, or that has rotted inside the fruit, is less dense than it should be and floats to the surface. Those are skimmed off and discarded. What sinks goes out to dry.
Once dried, the beans are checked again as they are packed up for the journey to the mill.
Check 2 · immature and rotten beans float off in the wash -
At the mill
The skin comes off, and a machine sorts by colour
Through drying, each seed is still wrapped in a parchment skin that has been protecting it. At the mill that skin is removed, and the bean underneath is exposed properly for the first time since it was a cherry.
This means it can be inspected properly for the first time too. A digital sorter looks at the beans individually at high speed and ejects anything that does not match on colour.
Check 3 · defects removed by digital colour sorting -
At the mill
Graded into sizes
The beans are then separated by size, which is how coffee is traded and exported. Size matters for roasting as well as for grading, because beans of different sizes take on heat at different rates.
Those size grades get recombined later, in the proportions that give us the profile we are looking for.
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Bogotá
The lab in Bogotá
Samples go to a lab in Bogotá, and this is where the decision actually gets made. Coffee from a range of growers is tested, tasted and graded there before we commit to any of it.
One rule we hold to: every sample must come from the current harvest. Each year's crop has its own character, so tasting the current one is the best way to know exactly what we are buying.
Check 4 · tested, tasted and graded before anything is bought -
Bogotá
The deal, and the feedback
We close the deal with the growers themselves rather than through a broker, which means we are sitting with the people who grew it. It also means the money goes where it should. With no third party taking a margin in between, the growers are paid properly for their work and we can still keep our prices where they are.
We bring the lab results with us too, so growers can see how their coffee performed and understand exactly what we are looking for.
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At sea
Two weeks to Canada
Once the coffee is in sacks it is shipped. The crossing takes about a fortnight, and the beans arrive in Oakville still green and unroasted, which keeps the quality intact the whole way.
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Kerr Street, Oakville
Unpacked, and looked at again
The sacks come to the roastery under our café on Kerr Street and we go through the green beans, pulling out defects and anything that found its way in during the journey. Nothing goes into the roaster until it has been through this check.
Check 5 · visual inspection of every sack -
Kerr Street, Oakville
Roasted, cooled and handpicked
We roast five kilos at a time, every weekday. Roasting is also when the last defects reveal themselves, because beans that differ even slightly in moisture take on colour differently from the rest of the batch.
They are easiest to see on the cooling tray, spread out and still hot, so that is where we pick out anything that does not match the profile.
Check 6 · off-profile beans picked out by hand -
Kerr Street, Oakville
Into the bag
One final check as the coffee is packed, and the roast date goes on the bag so you can see for yourself how fresh it is.
Check 7 · final check at packing
How the coffee keeps getting better
When we finish testing a grower's samples in Bogotá, we give them the results.
Because we buy directly, those results go straight back to the farm, and they are simply information we have and the growers can use. What scored well. Where the harvest varied, and what might lie behind it.
The following season, they can act on it. The quality we are buying holds steady or improves, and the grower gets better at something that is their livelihood. It is a kind of feedback growers very rarely get to see.
How many times does it get checked?
More than most people would guess. The journey above has seven stages where coffee is sorted, and within those there are somewhere between twelve and fourteen individual checks between the tree and the bag: by the pickers, in the washing channel, twice at the mill, at the lab in Bogotá, and three more times after it reaches Oakville.
What ends up in the bag is what came through all of it.
Questions people ask us
Where does Vereda Central's coffee come from?
Colombia, exclusively, from a range of growers across the country's coffee regions. We buy directly from the farmers rather than through brokers or exporters, and every sample is tested and graded at a lab in Bogotá before we buy.
How is coffee processed after it is picked?
The cherries are depulped to get the fruit off the bean, then washed. Washing also sorts them, because beans that have not matured properly or have rotted inside the fruit float to the surface and are skimmed off. What is left is dried, then taken to a mill, where the parchment skin around each seed is removed, a digital sorter ejects defective beans by colour, and the rest are graded by size before export.
Why is coffee picked by hand?
Because coffee does not ripen evenly. On a single tree there will be ripe fruit next to fruit that needs several more weeks, so pickers take only what is ready and return later for the rest. It is the first quality decision made about any coffee.
How long does it take coffee to get from Colombia to Canada?
About two weeks at sea. The beans travel green and unroasted, and are roasted at our Kerr Village roastery in Oakville after they arrive.
Why does Vereda Central buy from several farms rather than one?
Because we would rather hold the standard fixed than commit to a single estate. Colombia's growing regions vary enormously, harvests change from year to year, and each season we take samples from a range of growers and choose on what is in front of us.
How many people grow coffee in Colombia?
Around 550,000 families. Coffee is a significant part of Colombian national identity, and the knowledge behind it is passed down through generations of the same families.
Taste the end of the journey
All our coffee is Colombian, bought direct from the growers and roasted in Oakville every weekday, with the roast date printed on every bag. Tell us how you brew and we will grind it to match.
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