t  h  e  b  r  o  w  n  m  a  n  i  f  e  s  t  o

1.  Who is The Brown Coffee Company?  The Brown Coffee Company is comprised of me, Aaron Blanco, and sometimes my wife, Jenee, who keeps the books from withering away and listens to me plan, strategize and prognosticate, complain, etc.

2.   Are there any Brown Coffee Company retail sites?  No.

3.  Are there any plans for Brown Coffee Company retail sites?  We're always looking for that perfect site to come along.  Who knows?  For the now, though, Brown is content to focus on the successful growth of its wholesale accounts and its fledgling web operations.

4.  Why don’t I see [Coffee X] on your list? Our coffee lineup is constantly evolving for a few reasons.  The first reason is that coffee is an agricultural product and as such certain coffees from certain locales around the world will have coffee in season while others won't or won't have fresh green beans available.

Another reason is because Brown doesn't like to carry a recognizeable coffee just to have it on the roster.   Performance in the cup is what it's all about.  Sometimes that means displeasing folks who expect to have a certain coffee year round.  For those customers we try to stock something that would similarly please and hope you'll bring an adventurous enough spirit to go with it.  Who knows but that you may just find your new favorite coffee.

Sometimes we don’t carry a coffee because it’s too overpriced due to hype or reputation.  Hawaiian Kona, Jamaica Blue Mountain and that weird civet-cat poop coffee come to mind.  Like wine, these days you don’t have to spend the most to get the most.  The corollary to that is that in today's specialty coffee world there are a wide range of truly stunning coffees that Brown is keen to introduce you to.  Maybe you didn't know that Rwanda is producing some great coffees again; or that El Salvador is poised to be propeled to the fore of the specialty coffee world in the next few years.  The good news is that you don't have to know that...that's our job, and we take it seriously.  You simply sit back, visit this site often, reap the benefits and then look like a genius to all your friends and family.  So come on around often and see what new stuff tickles your fancy.

Finally, it goes without saying that the world is an unpredictable place.  Coffee is, of course, subject to the same whims of Mother Nature as any other organic item:  be they earthquakes in Java, tsunamis in Sumatra, volcanoes in El Salvador, drought in Ethiopia or hurricanes throughout the Caribbean and Central America.  As mentioned a couple paragraphs above, sometimes the quality is just, not, there.  And you can rest assured that Brown would rather carry a lesser known coffee origin of higher quality than a well known one of inferior quality just for the namesake of it.
 
 

4.  Why does your coffee cost so much?  My sister once said that anything that costs you little is probably worth little.  I forget what she was referencing, but what a truism for life.  And coffee.  Perhaps another way of asking that question would be to wonder...why does all that coffee on the supermarket shelves sell for so cheap?  I mean, seriously.  The grocery store Bucket 'o Beans costs about as much as a gallon of gas and may last you way, way longer, but just consider for a moment that even at The Brown Coffee Company's prices the cost of a cup of coffee still comes to just a few pennies per cup.  So why not spend the extra change for a vastly superior product?  The world's best coffees (like what we sell here) are actually more economical than a glass of wine, a mug of beer, a soda, a bottled water, a cup of juice....  Do the math, skip the supermarket swill and come on over to the Brown side.

5. What happens if I want a coffee you don’t currently have?  While we make every effort to keep a steady supply of the world’s best coffees, sometimes there are good reasons we don’t/can’t carry a coffee. [see #3 above] But there’s no need to suffer in silence.  Talk to us.  Tell us what you’re looking for in a coffee and we’ll do our best to pair you up with a coffee that you’ll enjoy.  Look at it as your chance to be adventurous and try something new, different, exciting.   Some things are good over and over and over again exactly the same.  (Cold sausage and mushroom pizza comes to mind.)  But we think that's no way to experience coffee.

6.  Why don’t I see very many (or any) Fair Trade,  bird-friendly, rainforest-friendly (or insert your own favorite cause here) certified coffees?  The Brown Coffee Company does its best to source coffees that are being responsibly grown and ethically procured in a transparent chain.  Because our main goal is to provide you with amazingly tasty coffee, we feel quality of taste will trump any external labels any day of the week.  We believe those types of certifications have their place in the larger coffee world; but because a certification doesn't actually taste like anything, we prefer taste in the cup as a better arbiter of quality.

The other issue this brings up is one of reliability.  One of the best things about certifications is that it gives consumers some measure of certainty that the purveyor of that product has definitely done...such and so.  Without that, how can anyone be sure that a company such as Brown is actually concerned about whether the coffee they want to buy isn't coming at the cost of unfair labor practices, or that its growers are at least as concerned with their neighbors' downstream water quality being just as pristine as theirs?  You can't.  But that's where RELATIONSHIPS come in.  Call us.  Email us.  Ask us questions to your heart's content about where we get our coffees and what makes them so special.  We would love to hear from you and tell you all about this passive organic coffee (see Organics question below), or that coffee we bought from a smallholder grower, or how this other farm uses creative techniques for fertilization that keeps quality high the natural way.  In the end, we believe certifications are a great place to start, but perhaps their best purposes beyond that foundation are for thin, impersonal relationships in an impersonal chain from producer to consumer (i.e., you need it because you don't/won't have a real relationship with your coffee purveyor).  At Brown we believe in getting quality coffees wherever we can find them based on quality relationships that are as transparent as we can find, and then building quality relationships with you based on trust and respect...the old fashioned way.

I can go on and on with regard to this topic; but just to review:  Is Brown opposed to things like Fair Trade and organic coffees?  NOT AT ALL.  But do we seek them out for their own sake as a symbol of actual taste quality?  NO.

6.5  Tell me more about this.  A better model we are really waking up to is a more relational one between farmers and purveyors such as The Brown Coffee Company.   An example of that might look something like this.  Brown finds a coffee they really like.  Brown seeks out the growers and buys as close to directly from them as possible.  A best-case scenario would have someone from Brown (me) actually traveling to that farm to meet the growers, the pickers, the processers--all the people--who have a hand in actually caring for the coffee in its country of origin.  These kinds of direct lines of communication benefit everyone.  They mean a premium that is paid more directly to the farmer for quality product.  This premium translates into the ability for the farm/farmer to continue on the path to quality and to provide better living conditions and social services for his workers, ensuring in its turn that there will be premium coffee for Brown and for Brown's customers--you!--into the forseeable future.  The cirlcle of life.  Or something like that.

Now, we're a ways away from being able to do this kind of massive project undertaking.  But we're heading there and we will get there.



7.  Do you carry any organic coffees?  Yes.  And yes, unofficially.  Our offerings list is always changing and often includes coffees that are certified organic.  A fair percentage of coffees worldwide are passive organic, meaning they were grown without the use of chemicals or synthetic fertilizers but have not been certified as such due to time and costs associated with the certification process.  We also strive to stock only decaffeinated coffees that have been decaffeinated without the use of chemicals and always designate the decaffeination method, such as WP (water processed), SWP (swiss water processed) or CO2 (liquid carbonic processed).  Incidentally, even if we offered a particular coffee that was certified organic it would be hard for us to label and sell it as such because our operations here in San Antonio are not certified organic by anyone.  Now, rest assured I'm not adding anything to the coffee but tender loving care.  But just so you know....

8.  Why is your coffee roasted so much lighter than I've seen other coffees?  In a nutshell, we prefer a slightly lighter roast style than the one that is often used by some roasters on the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest.  It’s all about the coffee and we want you to taste the coffee, not the roast we put it to.  Dark roasting dulls coffee’s subtle taste characteristics, creates a “thinner” dimension to the coffee and can often be used to mask inferior quality beans.  While some beans will stand up to a darker roast and will actually shine under such conditions, we like to let the bean decide that, not an arbitrary, pre-determined roasting timeline.  If you're used to drinking darker roasted coffees with lots of surface oils on the beans--think Starbucks--then coffee such as those from The Brown Coffee Company will at first taste more "sour" or  tangy.  This is in fact not a souring at all.  It's actually more of the true flavors of the bean that are uncovered by the removing of the blanket of a darker roast.   Conversely, a coffee drinker used to such lighter roasts always notices the smoke and ashy feel of a darker roast.  Neither is necessarly "better."  It's preference, and our stance is that you are paying to taste the coffee, not what we've done to the coffee.

9.  Do you ship internationally?  Yes!  Check out our Current Offerings Sheet for information.

Have a question for us? Drop us a line.
Copyright . The Brown Coffee Company. All rights reserved.