HELENA – Roasting your own coffee beans could be seen as challenging, but a Helena couple has a passion for a good cup and decided to brew up their own coffee company.
“There’s no place in the world that you don’t either grow coffee or drink coffee,” said Scott Bouma, co-founder of Caffeic Coffee. “It’s such a ritual, it’s such a part of people’s lives."
Coffee – it means a warm cup in the morning, or perhaps a meeting between old friends.
For Rayna and Scott Bouma, coffee means business.
After returning from Peru where they tasted freshly grown, roasted and served coffee, Rayna knew she needed that at home.
“I said to Scott, ‘I want some more good coffee!’ And he said, ‘Well, start roasting your own coffee’,” she recalled.
That was a year ago and this coffee-loving couple hasn’t looked back since.
“So we started with a tiny little popcorn maker we bought at the Goodwill store,” Rayna said.
After some taste tests, they outgrew their little popcorn makers and ordered a real roaster.
Ryan said she ordered it from a company in Minnesota, flew out for a one-day crash course in roasting and came back ready to start.
The next task had nothing to do with actual coffee beans – a name for the business. Their original ideas had already been taken.
“So, we just went with caffeic because we figured we could get that domain name,” said Rayna.
Caffeic acid is naturally found in coffee, and as a former veterinarian and software engineer, they felt it was perfect.
“We’re both kind of science geeks, science nerds,” Rayna said jokingly. “It does describe us very well,” added Scott.
Just like that, Caffeic Coffee Roasting was born and now the roaster inside their garages gets put to work twice a week filing their online orders.
As the beans continue to roast, the smell is unmistakable.
“The African coffees tend to be more floral and fruity and have a brighter acidity,” Rayna said. “The coffee from Sumatra has a very earthy, spicy taste to them, very low in acidity.”
While the beans go round and round in the roaster, Rayna keeps a close eye on the temperature, watching to ensure the beans don’t roast too long.
“I think if coffee is good and it’s fresh and a little lighter, you really get the taste of the coffee and then you don’t need to add the sugar,” she said.
Caffeic Coffee roasts several different flavors and blends right now, and eventually, they would like to expand.
“We would like to grow this into a family business. We’d like to get our kids involved in some level and then maybe down the road have it has a full-time business for us,” Rayna said.
Working together fits into the couple’s long term goals, as does traveling around to the different coffee regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
“Eventually we would like to start doing more direct trade and go down to some of the coffee producing countries and meet the farmers and build relationships there,” she said.
Because brewing a good cup of Joe is the ultimate goal one cup at a time.
“Personally, I get really excited when people try my coffee and say, ‘I could drink this without sugar or I could drink this without sugar and cream,” Rayna said.
Caffeic Coffee mainly sells online. You find their website here.
In Helena, Caffeic Coffee usually sells their different brews at the farmer’s market in the summer months and also sells their blends at Dinners Done Right.
