We started Wavelength Coffee Roasters so that everyone can experience the best of what the future holds for coffee. For us, this means not only finding innovative, exciting producers to share with our customers, but also approaching our operations holistically from a fresh perspective.
Sourcing
As our planet's climate changes, innovative coffee producers across the globe are evolving the way coffee is grown, who grows it and where, and the varieties being cultivated.
At Wavelength Coffee Roasters we source our beans from farmers on the frontier of coffee cultivation, whose wide-ranging initiatives we group into five categories:
Future Farmers
These coffees are sourced from farmers who represent the next generation, such as women-owned farms and youth programs.
Female property ownership, still a rarity in many places, helps to improve income equality and self-determination for women throughout the community. Youth-focused programs encourage younger farmers to get into today's coffee market, with its focus on experimentation and quality, as an opportunity to make their mark.
New Varietals
These newly developed hybrid strains have been carefully bred to deliver excellent cup quality alongside greater resilience to droughts, heavy rains, higher temperatures, pests and diseases.
Existing Arabica varietals can’t tolerate the shift to hotter, drier weather that many traditional coffee-producing areas are experiencing. Buying these special coffees builds market demand, providing farmers with the security they need to make the investment.
Adaptive Agriculture
We source these coffees from producers who embrace, and sometimes invent, farm-level best practices for climate adaptation and mitigation such as emission reduction, agroforestry, intercropping, water conservation, regenerative agriculture, waste recapture, mycorrhizae, and many others.
Adopting new practices can be expensive and risky, especially for smallholder farmers. Every pound of their beans we roast helps to ensure the long-term survival of their farm, family, and way of life.
Emerging Origins
On the flip side of every challenge lies an opportunity. As climate change makes some growing regions less suitable, areas further north and south show promise. The specialty coffee market has also opened doors to countries not previously well-known for coffee production.
These emerging origins, each with their own distinct terroir, offer an opportunity to explore unique flavor profiles and experience firsthand the future of coffee.
Community Initiatives
In many of the places it is grown, coffee is the core of the local economy; with some help, income from its cultivation can support not just a single farm but an entire community.
Our "Community Initiatives" coffees represent various programs designed to improve living standards at a hyper-local level with input from the people who live there. These include water filtration systems, financing micro-loans, purchasing livestock, and funding K-12 schools, among others. These programs help to promote stability, self-sufficiency and resiliency in a rapidly changing world.
Roasting
Nearly all coffee today is still roasted with technology from the 1850's: rotating metal drums heated by open-flame natural gas (methane) burners.
Modern roasting machines are all-electric, low-emission, highly efficient and super smart. This is roasting for the 21st century.
Air Roasting Technology
We use 100% electric, clean air roasting for our coffees.
Air roasting works by suspending the beans in a column of hot air, allowing them to roast more evenly and consistently without picking up unwanted flavors or defects that can happen with drum roasters. Our roasters are designed to produce safe, low-temperature, clean exhaust without filters, catalyzers or afterburners.
Altogether, this means that we can roast clean-tasting coffees more consistently using less energy and with lower emissions than conventional methods.
Renewable Power
PV panels at our facility provide a sizeable portion of our electricity needs, with additional capacity purchased through a community solar program. The remaining power we use is made up of our state's grid mix, of which about a third comes from renewables.
While it is not currently possible for us to use 100% renewables for our energy needs, we will continue to look for opportunities to get closer to that goal and add more capacity when it becomes available.
Packaging
Here's the truth: after just one use, virtually all paper, plastic and laminate coffee bags end up in a landfill or are burned. There has to be a better way.
For our packaging we strive to be as "circular" as possible, meaning that material stays out of the waste stream and can be reused and recycled endlessly.
Steel Cans
Why steel? Unlike plastic and paper, it's infinitely recyclable and is recovered at a higher rate (72%) than any other food packaging material. Our coffee cans are manufactured in the USA from 100% domestically sourced steel, which keeps our material loop as short as possible.
Steel is also the ideal barrier for keeping oxygen, moisture and light away from the beans inside. This, plus an integrated valve, means our coffee stays fresher longer.
Green Coffee
Importers ship green unroasted coffees in large sacks (about 130lbs) with the familiar burlap/jute outer material covering an inner protective plastic bag. While burlap can be composted, the plastic bag has typically been trashed.
As part of an overall waste-reduction strategy, we will participate in single-stream recycling programs designed specifically for plastic green bean shipping bags.