Coffee with a Conscience

Published in HMag : March 2009 Six years ago, Jason Hofing didn’t even drink coffee. Now he runs a roasterie. That might seem like a quick progression to some, but for Hofing, it couldn’t happen fast enough. Up until last May, Hofing and his wife, Rachel, lived in Oshawa. She was a full time caregiver to their two young children. He drove for FedEx. The job was supposed to be an interim one—something to fill the gap when he quit teaching in 2002—but before he knew it, five years worth of 13-hour days were behind him. Hofing decided he needed a job that allowed him more control over his life. He was tired of getting home after his kids were in bed. Rachel was burnt out on babysitting. Both of them were having trouble with the idea that his job was simply delivering stuff. Fortunately, some of the stuff Hofing delivered was to Multatuli Coffee Merchants, a Kingston roasterie that hooked him on lattes and eventually lured him to the business side of beans. After five years of enjoying a daily cup with Multatuli staff, Hofing and his wife decided to pursue a roasterie of their own. They moved to Hamilton to be near family and took possession of a commercial space on the mountain in September 2008. Red Hill Coffee Trade is located at the rear of a Brafasco outlet off Nebo Road. Next door, the fans at Stonehaven Granite Works drown out the sound of the nearby Red Hill Valley Expressway. The location belies the character of the coffee company, but it was affordable and close to home. Rachel can smell the beans when she walks their children to school on Tuesdays—roasting days. Inside, the roasterie hosts telltale signs of his children’s frequent visits and Hofing’s love of the arts—tricycles here, a Play-Skool basketball net there, a couple of guitars near the grinder. The cinder block walls are not as romantic as the word roasterie suggests, but what the building lacks in atmosphere, Hofing makes up for in approach. Once a week, he feeds small batches of fair trade and organic beans—from buttery sweet Bolivian to rich, dark chocolate Ethiopian—into a silver and black Diedrich roaster. Many commercial roasters have switched to digital machines, but Hofing’s not looking to stock the shelves at Metro; he prefers analog. He likes to stand beside the roaster, appraise aroma, check the colour of the beans, and manually dump the drum when the temperature gauge hits 340 F. He heat seals, by hand, 12-ounce bags of whole and ground beans. These bags retail for $12.95 and will last the casual coffee drinker three weeks. The casual drinker is who Hofing had in mind when he started his Coffee Trade last fall. Red Hill isn’t Tim Horton’s, where your only options are black, regular or double-double, but neither is it Starbucks, where the beans are so region-specific (Ethiopian Yirgacheffe or Ethiopian Harrar?) as to be overwhelming. “I see Red Hill as a middle-of-the-road alternative,” Hofing says. “This isn’t the dark ages of coffee like it was in the 60’s when coffee was dirt cheap. Now people treat coffee almost as a wine…Red Hill introduces its drinkers to the wine-like qualities of different countries’ beans. It’s an education.” Inform yourself—pick up a package of any of a dozen varieties of these locally roasted beans at Goodness Me!, Coco Tea Co., or The House of Java. If you’re interested in visiting the roasterie, keep checking the website (www.redhillcoffee.com) for news on public hours.