Alpine Roastery’s founder, George Yost has a vision to be a different kind of coffee company. We are committed to a greener planet, and sustainable farming methods. He spends three months every year in countries with pheasant farmers “the greatest people in the world”. They have virtually no resources. They still grow coffee the way their Great Grandfathers did.

By getting involved, and guaranteeing to buy all the coffee that each of our family farms can produce we improve the growing conditions, improve the quality, and we assure each of our member farmers will receive a fair price for their goods. All our Cameroon coffee is passively organic, and meets fair trade

 

 

requirements although it is too costly to certify these programs in this country. 

 

In most third world countries, the poor farmer is the lowest member on the economic scale. No American has any idea how much work it takes to produce that morning cup of Java we all take for granted. If everyone involved in the coffee process made just $1.00 per hour for every hour involved in producing  your coffee, every pound of coffee would cost over $25.00 per lb.

 

Our vision is to bring this face and personalization to your coffee. At the same time improve conditions and processes so this disorganized band of farmers can see some profits from our Great American Passion… Their Coffee.

 

 

We get involved at the farm level. We buy directly from the farmer. We process your coffee in our state of the art mill in Douala Cameroon, then we export to Denver where it is roasted to the Peak of Perfection. See pictures of our processing facility in Africa: http://www.cafespierreandre.com/version-us/usinage/usinage.html

We sort by density, and size, then we calibrate and we do a second air density sort. This is followed by a twice picked European Preparation. Local women hand pick the defective beans out of the good coffee.

There further grading, color sorting, polishing and decaffeination takes place. We separate the Specialty grades from the ordinary coffee, and then the beans are sent to Denver to our roasting facility where it is roasted in batches no larger than 100 KG in our Probat cast iron roaster. It has been upgraded with state of the art controls, but still produces the quality you get only with a 3 ton cast machine.

Where does the other coffee go?

We sell it to other roasters, to Coffee Service operators, even roasters that sell to prisons and food service. Specialty coffee is considered as anything above a 50 cup quality. That is out of 100. So 50% of all coffee is special? I don’t think so. Java Café Select sells only beans at or above 85 cup quality. Since there is virtually no coffee graded above 95, you receive from us the highest quality in the market today. Our hard work in sourcing our coffee is what makes us unique.

Farm Programs

We not only buy directly from farmers, we step in where farm coops have failed. Farmers rely on cooperatives or buyers who often take advantage of illiterate pheasant farmers for their livelihood. There are countless stories of farm cooperatives who have sold their neighbors coffee and never paid them or paid a very low price.

 

Our commitment to our farmers is strong. We supply them each spring with farm aids, and growing plans. In the winter during harvest we provide transport, drying racks, expertise in processing, and we pay cash so they never worry about getting paid. In September we provide $10,000 in school scholarships. All children of our farmers under the age of 16 MUST go to school. Child labor in this part of the world is very difficult to control. We do what we can. We call it “More Than Fair Trade” We not only pay a fair price, we invest in the crop when the farmer can least afford to do so.

Our member farmers are growing each year, and our program is spreading to more countries each year. The effort we put into sourcing our coffee is how we save you money, and bring you a real community product.. We eliminate the profit of the coffee agent, auction, exporter, importer, and the broker who sells to the roaster who must charge you more to cover his lack of investment is sourcing their coffee.
Java Café has nothing but great coffee, roasted the old fashion way to your exact specifications, all for a lot less than you pay now. Give us a try you will love doing business with us more than your customers love the coffee you serve.