The Esquimalt community will notice a pleasant new smell in the air— its first coffee roastery opened this week.
The Esquimalt Roasting Company, located at 1207B Esquimalt Road, is the vision of Greg Sherwell and his wife, who wanted to establish a business within their own community and really focus on specialty coffee.
“I felt that roasting would be a great way to contribute to the community,” Sherwell says.
“We identify it as a specialty coffee company, and the fact that we are a micro roaster means that we have the ability to create roasting profiles that are a lot more specific to the individual coffee style or coffee bean, rather than roasting in larger batches where those types of controls tend to not be as accessible,” he explains.
Sherwell says that they’re working with some very experienced people to develop the flavour profiles they want, and since the roaster is right there in the shop they have the flexibility to experiment and find out what people like.
Sherwell says their coffee beans come from around the world, but as a specialty coffee shop they are very selective with which ones they use. At the moment Sherwell says they’re working with products sourced from Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Ethiopia and “some Zambian, just for fun.”
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“Typically when you’re working with specialty coffee, the organic, the single origin farm, those types of elements are kind of built into the supply network,” he says.
“We are also appreciative that not everybody is interested in consuming beans that they may not understand the flavour profile of, so we’re really focusing on just making our product accessible to whoever wants to enjoy good coffee.”
While the coffee shop will host some baked goods from Bond Bond’s bakery in Victoria, their main focus will be selling whole beans to customers from their retail space. Sherwell says that as a new company, they’ve got a lot to learn, but are excited for the challenge.
“We’re residents of Esquimalt, and we’re interested in increasing our involvement in community activities and building slowly into a brand that the community of Esquimalt can be proud of,” Sherwell says.
