Name of business owner: Mohamad AlAdsani
Name of competing roaster: Mohamad AlAdsani
When did your roastery start? And, as the owner, why a coffee roastery?
Altitude Roastery started right before corona lock down happened in kuwait, which gave me lots of time for trials and experiments. A coffee roastery gives lots of freedom in terms of how the coffee tastes in the cup. and much more creativity in terms of what flavors you would like to shed light on in the coffee we are roasting. and the advantage of being able to have much more exposure to lots of origins and people connected to these origins.
How did you learn to roast coffee?
I had taken coffee roasting courses from the SCA with Morten Munchow, then from Mill City roasters with Derek Delapaz. then complemented that with Q grading certificate as I believe that a roaster is only as good as his coffee tasting skills are. Then I enrolled in roast master 1 and 2 courses and Nordic style roasting seminar from Copenhagen with Michael De Renouard.
And what drew you to roasting as a profession?
The amount of control, creativity, and choices you have as a roaster over how the coffee tastes, in terms of how bright and juicy the coffee can be, how to bring out floral notes or fruity notes, how to make a chocolatey coffee sweet. Apart from processing, and everything that happens at the farm, I believe roasting has a huge impact on how the coffee comes out. I always like to challenge myself and my skills, and having developed lots of passion for coffee prior to roasting, it made me really want to challenge myself in this field and become a quality oriented roaster in the region that brings this passion to his craft, and to share with people what I am passionate about.
What do you love most about the coffee roasting industry?
There are many things that I love about the coffee roasting industry, it is really hard to name one thing. But one of the things I love the most and what still gets me excited is when I receive a new coffee that we need to create a profile for, it takes me to the same feeling I had in my first ever roast, super excited and happy.
One thing I really love and appreciate about the coffee roasting industry is the friendships you make along the way. from coffee sourcing connections, to fellow coffee roasters, and to end clients that end up being friends and build a strong relationship with. I feel that this is very unique to the coffee industry that mostly everyone I have been introduced to was extremely friendly and extremely passionate about it.
In your opinion, is roasting more science or more art?
I feel it is more science, but there is definitely art involved too, but not in the common mystical sense, but more into honing your tasting skills and being able to read the coffee and the roast, and how to adjust the roast to bring out what made you fall in love with it when you sampled it in the first place.
Was there a particular cup of coffee that changed the way you think about coffee?
If there was a cup that comes to mind, its the cup that made me fall in love with specialty coffee and got me into it, and it was a pour over cup of Ethiopian coffee from Yirgacheffe back in 2016. I still remember each sip tasting like a spoonful of blueberry jam, it was the first time I was able to describe coffee without thinking or saying it tastes like coffee. and ever since then, I started looking into roasting and different origins, and there was never looking back from there.
What is your focus as a roastery? Wholesale to cafes? Do you roast just for your
own cafe? Sell online?
Our focus as a roastery is to develop the coffee market and taste to show that there are many origins of coffee that taste completely different than each other.
As a roastery, we believe wholesale is extremely important for brand awareness, and to bringing your goal closer to the individual clients that we do sell online and in our roastery to. we are also constructing our first cafe at the moment which is expected to open up in Q1 2024, and we hope that sheds more light on our goal of showing people the uniqueness of each origin and each farm and each process.
May you please tell us a bit about your team? Who makes the wheels turn in your
operation?
We are a small team of 5 people, I am the headroaster and the co founder of the roastery, and there are two assistant roasters/baristas that are in the team for 2 years and 1 year that help me choose coffees when sourcing and profiling. We have one person handling logistics and inventory, he has been the first employee in this roastery and played an important role when it was just the two of us for about a year. and the last member to join is a part time accountant.
With all the different processing methods now available to roasters, is there a processing method that you enjoy working with? And why?
I tend not to look at the process when sourcing coffees, but I always find myself enjoying clean cups of coffee, whether a clean crisp natural processed, washed processed, or lightly anaerobic processed coffees (without a heavy fermenty note). and I always find myself staying away from the overly fermented coffees, as I enjoy the uniqueness of each origin, and some of the newer processes tend to mask that alot and makes different origins taste the same more or less.
How have you seen coffee culture in your region grow over the last few years?
In my region and within my direct circle, I have seen lots of growth from drinking bitter coffee moving towards becoming home baristas brewing specialty coffee and being able to differentiate flavor notes between origins. It brings me lots of joy as a roaster to see this growth as it gives me motivation to roast and import more and more origins.
Where are you located and can people come visit you?
We are located in Kuwait, you can find our roastery in google maps, this is where people can walk in, try a coffee before they can purchase a bag if they wish to. We are also working on a specialty Cafe that will be open soon where people can enjoy the drinks we prepare the way we feel is optimal for our style of roasting.
What makes your roastery stand out in a booming industry?
We pride ourselves on our consistency, our quality control process is done in a methodical way. We also pride ourselves in sourcing high quality coffees from different origins having lots of options for our clients to choose from. We also believe that our knowledge and experience in this field so far, helped us build a healthy size client base that appreciate the coffee we source and the way we roast it.
