toomer’s coffee | Toomers Coffee Roasters Company

Testimonials

“Our church has been purchasing coffee from these great people since 2005. We provide a Sunday Morning Café and also use the coffee for weekly events and our staff during the week.

What can I say except we love the product, love the fair pricing, but more importantly love the people we deal with at Coffee 4 Missions and Toomer’s Coffee Roasters. I would encourage you to seriously consider bringing the Coffee 4 Missions brand and purpose into your church, business or home.”

Rusty Hutson
Lead Pastor
Cornerstone Church
Auburn, AL
www.CornerstoneBuzz.org
(Congregation size: 1200+)

“We opened our Café 246 coffee shop last year and wanted a high quality coffee at a reasonable price but also a coffee company with a higher purpose and ideals than simply us selling coffee. What a tall order!

We found everything we were looking for and more in Coffee 4 Missions and Toomer’s Coffee Roasters.

It is outstanding coffee; our people love it and purchase bags to enjoy at home. The company/people are of the highest caliber, honest, and dependable; they will do whatever it takes to be sure we have what we need when we need it.

What I appreciate most is the help they gave us prior to opening our coffee service - they helped with design and layout, equipment procurement, lots of encouragement, training of our staff, and were on-site the day we opened!

You cannot go wrong purchasing coffee from this outstanding company- you will receive great coffee at a reasonable price and have a good feeling knowing you are helping to support missions… one cup at a time.

Mary Lou Herald
Food Service Director
Whitesburg Baptist Church
Huntsville, AL
www.WhitesburgBaptist.org
(Congregation size 1500+)

“Life’s too short to drink bad coffee.” That quip is certainly true for me and the church where I serve as Executive Pastor, First Baptist Church of Opelika, AL. That’s why, when we decided to provide complementary coffee to those who attend our services on Sunday morning, we looked for the best product we could find for the best price. I really didn’t have to look far, because I already had a great relationship with Sandy and Trish Toomer at Toomer’s Coffee.

Since 2005 I have led a weekly men’s Bible study in their retail coffee shop. That provided me with firsthand knowledge that the coffee was excellent and that the Toomers are wonderful Christian people operating their business by Christian principles. We serve their coffee each Sunday, and some of their flavored coffee at banquets and church-wide fellowships.

Knowing that Sandy and Trish served as missionaries, and still today have a heart for missions, I was not surprised when Coffee 4 Missions became part of their “coffee family.” They truly have a desire to see the Lord use their business to help reach people for Christ throughout the world.

Fair pricing, excellent coffee, a heart for missions! I want to encourage you to seriously consider partnering with Coffee 4 Missions for your coffee needs. I personally, as well as our church, have been blessed.”

Mike King, Ed.D.
Executive Pastor
First Baptist Church
Opelika, AL
www.FBCOpelika.com
(Congregation size: 2400+)

“I adore Toomer’s Coffee Roasters and the people behind it (both the coffee and the owners)!

The infrared roasting brings out the full flavor of the bean, and it’s easier on my stomach. When I’m forced to drink coffee away from home, I can tell the difference. Nothing else is as smooth and mellow with the full flavor. I order plenty and take it with me when I’m traveling away from home. I travel around the world regularly and always have my Toomer’s Coffee stash with me! Seriously.

I’ve even mentioned it in my books because I want everyone to get a chance to taste it. Once you try Toomer’s, you won’t want to drink anything else!”

Colleen Coble
Author
Thomas Nelson Publishing
www.ColleenCoble.com

Coffee 4 Missions – Our newest brand

Coffee 4 Missions is the same great coffee you’ve come to expect from Toomer’s Coffee Roasters with one exception. The goal of Coffee 4 Missions is for it to become a focused engine for giving to missions and ministry around the world.

toomers_coffee_roasters_missionaries We are looking to become more involved with individuals, churches and organizations who want to purchase coffee knowing that their dollars go beyond sustainability for farmers in the coffee growing countries. We, of course, applaud these efforts. We lived and worked in the third world for nearly a decade and understand our responsibility there. This is why we actually hope to go further in that area by using Direct Trade coffees more and more.

But what we are really trying to do is make sure a significant percentage of profits (beyond what is paid to farmers) from the Coffee 4 Missions can be routed directly to great causes. Our tag is “Great Coffee supporting the Great Commission”.

Take a look at the website and please pass along the link and forward it to friends, pastors, and ministry directors to get them involved.

Thanks!

Buy Toomers Coffee

LATIN AMERICAN COFFEES
Brazil Cerrado A *Direct Trade* coffee, this Brazil Cerrado (a varietal of Arabica coffee) is accompanied by a nutty aroma with robust chocolate tones. One of our most popular Medium City roast coffees.	Columbian Supremo The highest rating Colombia has to offer it’s coffees, Supremo, is the quintessential coffee for so many years associated with Colombia. This high mountain grown bean is best presented in a Medium City Roast.	Costa Rican Criré Tarrazú A Direct Trade coffee from the Criré Farms. A traditional regional favorite, Tarrazú is a Costa Rican belt that produces one of the finer coffees Costa Rica has to offer. The Light to Medium City Roast presents a pleasing subtle blend of aromas from chocolate to cinnamon.	Mexican Altura From high in the mountains near Oaxaca, Altura is a pleasant diversion from some of it’s Latin cousins. A lighter roasted Arabica bean Altura is one of Mexico’s best coffees.
12 oz. Bags – $10.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags	12 oz. Bags – $10.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags	12 oz. Bags – $10.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags	12 oz. Bags – $10.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags
AFRICAN COFFEES		MAY SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION ROAST
Ethiopian Sidamo From the Sidamo Province in Ethiopia, Sidamo is a Medium to Full City Roast coffee appreciated for its deep, spice and wine or chocolate-like taste and floral aroma.	Tanzanian Peaberry Peaberry coffees are smaller beans created when the bean within the cherry does not develop into two separate halves. The result is a novel, compact football shaped bean treasured for it’s rich flavor. This is a Full City Roast coffee.
12 oz. Bags – $10.95 Quantity	12 oz. Bags – $10.95 Quantity	12 oz. Bags – $11.95 Quantity
SIGNATURE BLENDS/ROASTS and SWISS WATER PROCESS® DECAF
Auburn City Blend Our #1 seller is our own proprietary blend which is also our house blend. It is our most popular coffee especially with those who like BOLDER coffees.	Breakfast Blend Breakfast Blend is one of our flagship roasts, our marvelous proprietary blend of Latin coffees in Light to Medium City roast. Very bright flavor with chocolate tones, it’s the favorite at 6 a.m. , 9 a. m. or midnight!	Espresso Blend Our espresso blend is a proprietary blend of Sumatra Mandehling, Costa Rican Tarrazú and Columbian Supremo. We have many customers who enjoy our espresso as their regular morning brew at home.	French Roast Our French Roast has absolutely zero bitter after-taste. How do we do that? By actually doing a French Roast. A true French Roast is not burnt. It cups with a sweet note that perfectly complements the slight smokiness of the dark French Roast. Dark yet not too bold.
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Swiss Water Process® Brazil Decaf Leave it to the Swiss to figure out a way to decaffeinate coffee without harming the taste. Swiss Water Processed Decaf is a patented process whereby the caffeine is removed using simply clear, clean H2O. This is also a great mixer to blend with your favorite coffees (aka “half-caf”) when less caffeine is preferred without going completely “off the grid”.
12 oz. Bags – $11.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags
FLAVORED COFFEES
Vermont Maple Nut This is one of our most popular flavored coffees year-round. The subtle maple hint with just a hint of brown sugar aroma is just the ticket for weekend mornings under the blankets with a good book or the Sunday News. Maybe by the pool or on the deck with friends by the fire pit.	Southern Pecan Pie Pronounced in our neck of the woods: “Su-thun PEA-can”, this is probably our #1 selling flavored coffee. It tastes just like it should, a nutty pecan aroma and married to a great Medium City Roast Latin American coffee. “Yall will really like this one!”	Vanilla Butter Cream Remember cupcakes Grandma used to make with Butter Cream frosting? Think of this as a cupcake in a cup! Yummy.	Caribbean Cruise This is a favorite for beach lovers! Gentle aromatic hints of vanilla and rum together draw you back to a happy place by the pool, on the beach, sailing, or nustled around a driftwood fire on a secluded sand dune.
12 oz. Bags – $11.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags	12 oz. Bags – $11.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags	12 oz. Bags – $11.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags	12 oz. Bags – $11.95 Quantity 12 oz. bags

Coffee Processing – The Dry Method

Here's a grainy photo from one of my flights into the Ecuadorian rainforest to pick up coffee, 1997 (Click to enlarge)

As many of our locals know, before we came to Auburn, we were missionaries living in Central and South America. I worked as a bush pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship where I supported the work of missionaries to some degree, but to a greater degree my flying was in support of the indigenous tribes that inhabited the eastern rain-forested jungles of Ecuador. The tribes includes the Waorani, Shuar, Atshuar and Quichua Indians.

In the northern Ecuadorian jungle lived several communities of Quichuas (the descendants of the Incas) who grew Arabica coffee. In one community, Arajuno (ah-dah-hun-no), each year they began picking the coffee in November and the picking lasted through the holidays and finished in January.

They processed their coffee the best they could easily in the jungle by laying out plastic sheets on the main street of their community and situating the picked beans onto the black plastic in the sun. As it baked in the sun and they raked it back and forth throughout the day, the outer layer (pulp) would split, dry out the four layers surrounding the coffee bean and pull away from the inner fruit which is the coffee bean. This is an example of dry processing.

Dry Processing

The dry-process is often used in countries where rainfall is scarce and long periods of sunshine are available to dry the coffee properly. Most coffees from Indonesia, Ethiopia, Brazil, and Yemen are dry-processed.

Dry processed coffee. These are the actual cherries with beans still inside after dry processing. Next step is hulling.

The entire cherry ( the red fruit of the coffee plant ) after harvest is placed in the sun to dry on tables, in thin layers on patios or in the case I witnessed in Ecuador, a plastic covered street. It will take between ten days and two weeks for the cherries to completely dry. The cherries need to be raked regularly to prevent mildew while they dry.

Once the skin of the cherry is dry, the pulp and parchment are removed by a hulling process. This is commonly done by sending the dried cherries off to a mill with machinery to do the hulling. There also, the sorting and grading occur. While coffee was once all dry processed it is now limited to regions where water or infrastructure for machinery is scarce.

My experience in Ecuador was unique in that this was the rain forest, but somehow they managed to get the coffee dried out enough. When I picked it up, I can remember looking at the dried knurly beans and what I was seeing was the actual bean still encased in the dried out pulp.

Characteristics of Dry Processed Coffee

The dry-process produces coffee that is heavy in body, sweet, smooth, and complex. They are also lower in acidity (not pH), a flavor characteristic some call “brightness” or other refer to as the dry characteristics of a good red wine.

Probably the best example of a dry processed coffee we have in our inventory would be our Sumatra. Of course there are slight variations on the dry process and my experience has been that Sumatra while often a dry processes can have a slight mildewy taint. That’s not a negative but an actual characteristic common to many Sumatrans.

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In our next article, we will talk about the more common processing method known as wet processing.

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Sandy Toomer is Roast Master and part owner of Toomer’s Coffee Roasters, a premium specialty coffee roaster located in Auburn, Alabama.

Where do coffee beans come from?

This is the first is a multi-part series on coffee to help educate our customers.

First, there are two types of coffee beans

Coffee beans come from two basic versins of coffee plants: either the Robusta ( aka Coffea robusta, or Coffea canephora) or Arabica (aka Coffea arabica) version.

At Toomer’s Coffee Roasters we do not roast or sell Robusta beans. I once asked our coffee broker how much Robusta they sell and she said less that 5% of their total volume is Robusta. While it is higher in caffeine content (the main reason I guess a dubious roaster might add it..to jack up the “vibrancy” of their blends), the overall taste issues and roasting peculiarities she said make it a less than desirable option.

Arabica beans on the other hand, while lower in caffeine content have a number of factors that make them the number #1 preference amongst 99% of roasters today, taste being the main factor. But we will cover that in a later articel specifically on Arabica beans.

They start life as a fruit

Coffee beans start out "Cherries" (Click to enlarge)

Arabica beans are grown on low (3-6 feet) shrubby plants that bear white blossoms that produce the coffee fruit called “cherries” (about the size and color of cranberries).

These coffee cherries are clustered along the limbs of the plant ( See image). The cherries are harvested from approximately October through January each year. Since the coffee cherries do not ripen together, several pickings of the the same plant may be required until all of the cherries have been harvested at the peak of ripenness.

This is the first step in the chain of factors that seperates fair coffee from truly exceptional coffee: only picking the red cherries. Mixing in under-ripe/ greenish cherries with red cherries will result in bitter coffee no matter how well it is roasted.

In our next article we will talk about the regions beans are grown in and how that affects flavor.

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Get to know Auburn’s Coffee Roaster

Roast Master, Sandy Toomer checks the progress of each roast step by step to perfection!

From the beginning we felt the only way we could keep our product consistent with our own expectations would be by roasting our own coffee. We like to think of ourselves as a coffee roaster first and a coffee shop second. The shop is where we display our craft, much as first class art gallery is a show place for fine art.

That said here is a short FAQ about our coffee roasting operation:

What exactly do you mean by “custom roasted”?

Just that; we roast using customized roast profiles for each coffee depending on where it was grown, the altitude and process used to process the bean (i.e wet or dry process) . Profiles are similar to recipes, except there is only one ingredient, high grade Arabica coffee beans. The customization is the way each bean is roasted by varying several factors such as time, temperature, length of roast.

Where do you get your beans?

We primarily work through a coffee brokerage firm who imports coffee from all over the world for us. They buy various grades from each country and we in turn choose which beans we buy based on their offering.

However this year we are working on several import arrangements with a number of small family, tribal and community coop coffee farms in Central America and the Asiatic region to purchase their coffees direct. This is what we call Friendship Coffee. Our goal is develop a personal relationship with our farms in these regions.

If all goes well, someday we hope to offer tours to visit these new friends!

Currently we are test roasting and cupping to validate sample batches of these coffees.

How do you roast coffee?

First, someone has to teach you. It’s a craft. A craft is a passionate enterprise and we are passionate about good coffee.

Sandy was taught by Mr. Stephen Diedrich at Diedrich Manufacturing in Sandpoint, Idaho. In the beginning Diedrich Coffee Roasters was a Southern, California icon of custom roasted coffee for decades (read more). They built their own coffee roasters and eventually branched their coffee roaster manufacturing off as a separate enterprise. Hence, today we have Diedrich Manufacturing; considered the Rolls Royce of roasters. We use a Diedrich 7 kilo IR Roaster.

Next, you buy the best green Arbica coffee beans. We currently work through an acclaimed broker in New York and import coffees from:

Sumatra and Papua New Guinea (Indonesia)
Tanzania, Kenya ,and Ethiopia (Africa)
Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Columbia and Brazil (Central & So. America)
India

We also have our own house blends, such as top seller, our Auburn City Blend, Christmas Morning (seasonal), Harvest Morning (seasonal) and of course our proprietary Espresso Blend (for espresso based drinks).

In addition we offer a half dozen flavored coffees: Vermont Maple Nut, Snickeroo, Southern Pecan, Kahlua & Creme, Vanilla Butter Cream, and our own blend called Caribbean Cruise

Give us a try and you will taste the 14 day difference

The primary variation between our coffees and what you typically buy in the store has to do with the 14 day window.

When you roast coffee the heating initiates a chemical reaction that generally lasts for 14 days. This is why so many coffees are packages with those valves you see. Because for the first 14 days or so after roasting the coffee produces it’s trademark aroma. Without the valve the bag would rupture. After 14 days, that stops.

The trademark aromas range from chocolate, fruity, winy, floral notes, and so on. Actually each coffee will normally produce a range of aromatic values in each cup.

You don’t get this in mass produced coffees.

We ship anywhere anywhere!

Want to share some of this unique taste from the “loveliest village on the plains”? However if you are looking for another not listed, just call us. We’re a family owned operation and thus you are dealing directly with the owners!

VISIT OUR ON-LINE STORE HERE>>>

Call us today! 334-329-9852