The First Cup

Our story begins one day in the Venezuelan Andes, with a cup of coffee roasted that morning by our host, the Coffee Grower.

It’s 1986. Long before baristas. Long before gourmet coffee shops. While traveling through the Lara region of Venezuela, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, we were invited to visit una hacienda de café (coffee plantation).

Wow! How does coffee taste this good?

We didn’t realize it at the time, but with this cup we took the first step on a journey – a quest, really- to find the underlying secret to this smooth and rich Café del Caficultor, the Grower’s Coffee.

The Gift from the Grower

As we discovered, the secret of the flavor is in the art of roasting, and after a lot of trials and taste testing with local coffee gurus, we learned how to roast just like the Coffee Grower.

These growers don’t roast for volume or speed, they roast for quality – a way of getting the best out of that bean that they themselves plant, farm, harvest and dry.

There’s a lot to it, but mostly it’s about how you heat the beans in roasting, taking them from the green grano (seed) to a perfectly roasted bean. We had the fortune to receive this marvelous gift of knowledge from the Grower – how to roast coffee the way he does.

Puroast is Born

After the discovery, and the learning, came the transferring of that roasting. So we did, to Northern California.

Puroast® was born and offered as a “smooth, less bitter” coffee. Local co-ops, natural food stores and gourmet shops were our first customers. The taste was a hit. But, there was something else happening that we didn’t anticipate.

"Serendipity"

Puroast’s consumers talked about how well they felt. First, a few comments. Then, as distribution grew, daily calls and emails – all pretty much asking the same thing – “love your coffee, but what is it about Puroast that doesn’t bother my stomach?”

“Who knows,” we answered. All we knew was how great it tasted and how well we felt.

Another Guru – Dr. Shibamoto

So what is it about Puroast that doesn’t bother people’s stomachs?

Another bit of good fortune came our way. We found (and convinced!) Dr. Taka Shibamoto, to analyze Puroast. Dr. Shibamoto happened to be one the foremost researchers in the field of coffee, and here he was in our “backyard” at UC Davis.

He discovered: Puroast has 70% less acid than any other roasted coffee, and seven times the antioxidant level of green tea. So big a deal was this, he published his study.

No wonder all these Caficultores were always smiling – they start every day with exquisite tasting coffee, with wonderful aroma and they feel great!