How Sea Air And Chemistry Make A Great Cup Of Coffee
FREDERICTON— Brad Rideout grew up visiting his grandparents on Campobello Island, embracing the ocean that surrounded him. Now, as an adult, these memories helped him co-found a coffee company called Saltwinds Coffee.
“If you’ve ever been to the coast, you will notice immediately the wonderful smell of the ocean. And if you ever go into a restaurant or anything local, you can actually taste the flavours from the sea air,” said Rideout. “It permeates everything that you eat.”
Many years ago, he heard a story about how coffee first arrived in Canada. It would come on wooden ships and the sea air would permeate the coffee beans during their journey at sea. In the end, that would make for a better-tasting cup of coffee.
After these voyages were changed to steamer and steel hull ships, the sea air had no way of reaching the beans because they were stored in rooms on the ship, resulting in a loss of flavour in the coffee. People could tell the difference.
“They wanted the original beans but progress being what it is, it kind of got lost over the years,” said Rideout.
This is how the idea for Saltwinds Coffee Company was born.
Laura Richard, the co-founder, is a chemist by training and having this background was the perfect fit for this endeavour.
“When Brad told me this story, I immediately thought about the inherent chemistry behind it, [like] how salt would affect the taste,” said Richard.
As she read about coffee and the different reactions that occur when it roasts, she could see how the sea air treatment would change the reaction of the coffee.
Rideout and Richard were curious to see how they could recreate that added flavour into coffee beans with a similar process.
“I played around in our garage with some different methods and some of that worked and created a coffee that tasted really nice,” said Richard. “’Really smooth,’ is what we hear all the time from our customers, [it is] not at all bitter and that’s because of the sea air treatment.”
Their Ocean Fresh saltwater treated coffee is their best seller now.
Another aspect leading to the creation of their business was their carbon footprint. Last year, Richard started looking at her carbon footprint, which led to her selling her car, moving into a smaller house, and then she started analyzing the food and drinks they consumed daily.
As much as they loved coffee, it has a pretty high carbon footprint, said Richard. She looked at the processes of making coffee and knew there was a better way to do it.
“From what I’ve seen in chemical manufacturing, I [could] already think of 10 ways to make this process better for the environment,” said Richard.
The duo is trying to get to a zero-emissions roasting process but, as of now, they offer their clients a process that is better for the environment than the standard roasting process.
Richard said the idea of selling the coffee to the public was motivated by wanting to improve the environmental footprint of coffee.
“Something like three-billion cups of coffee per day are drunk and so if we can make an impact on the number of grams of CO2 that goes with each of those cups, it could go a long way to helping with this quest we’re all on to help our planet get through the environmental crisis,” said Richard.
Saltwinds Coffee roasts a variety of unique flavours. Rideout said they are in an experimental mode right now and are testing a bunch of flavours to see which ones are more or less popular.
“There are some really good combinations of flavours that can go with coffee and a lot of the tropical ones are quite popular,” said Rideout.
Some of the unique flavours they roast are banana, key lime, pineapple, and orange. These flavoured coffees are part of their “Treasures from the Hold” series.
“What we’re recreating is that image again of when coffee would have come up on sailing ships and would have been packed … with other products from the locations where the coffee came from,” said Richard. “Tropical products like coconut or pineapples or bananas and as it sat there in the Hold for weeks and months and that sea air was moving around, flavours from the tropical products have been infused into the coffee beans too and given them some of these unique flavour notes.”
“So, lacking a sailing ship and several months to do this, we’ve recreated that infusion in our garage lab roastery,” said Richard.
The roastery is a converted external garage they had at their home, where all the coffee is roasted from Douglas, New Brunswick.
Customers can purchase Saltwinds Coffee at local markets, like the Garrison Night Market and the New Maryland Market. although selling through their website is their primary channel.
Jessica Saulnier is an intern for Huddle in Fredericton. Send her feedback or story tips: [email protected]