‘Socially responsible’ coffee roasters get brewing in McHenry

How a coffee bean is roasted, ground and brewed makes a difference to how it tastes.

For Kevin Foglesong and Michael Kivland of Heady Cup Coffee Roasters, where and how that coffee was grown, and the living conditions of those growing and harvesting the beans, matter too.

The two Crystal Lake natives are set to launch their McHenry-based bean roasting businesses on Sunday. That is when their website, headycup.com, is set to go live and they will have their first booth at the Dole Farmers Market in Crystal Lake.

Their goal is to provide a coffee that is “traceable, sustainable and socially responsible,” Kivland said this week as the two were packaging beans at their warehouse, 4127 W. Orleans St., McHenry.

The friends and businesses partners quit their sales jobs last summer to focus on Heady Cup, Kivland said. They took Foglesong’s passion for roasting and Kivland’s passion for all things food related to find a new career path, Kivland said.

They are ordering green, unroasted beans from speciality growers all over the world so they can offer single-source coffees from countries like Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Brazil and Nicaragua.

Having coffee grown in one location at one specific time “highlights the varieties that are out there,” Kivland said.

They are roasting just 6 kilograms – or just over 13 pounds – of beans at a time that are “traceable to a farm and the mill where it is processed,” Kivland said

The distributor they are working with in Papua New Guinea ensures the farmer and his or her family gets a free education and housing. There is a water project ongoing there as well, and a new school is under construction, Kivland said.

Another importer, based in Nicaragua, has helped his growers buy trucks and purchased adjacent rainforest to protect the land and the coffee plants, Kivland said.

And for every bag of coffee they sell, Heady Cup will plant a tree in one of those countries, Kivland said.

While Kivland is selling their beans and company vision, Foglesong is roasting the beans.

Foglesong started roasting at home with a stovetop machine about five years ago, gifting his final product to friends and family. He and Kivland ran the numbers and saw they could make a successful businesses from that hobby, they said.

“If we are running the roaster two times week for five to eight hours day, it would be lucrative,” Foglesong said.

He opened three single-roast bags for a reporter to smell. The Brazilian bag was similar to the Columbian brew many people are used to. Another bag had a floral scent. The third, a Costa Rican bean, had a chocolate aroma.

That is what happens when the beans are handled and roasted correctly, Foglesong said – the notes of each bean come out.

While single-source beans are their passion, they realize some coffee drinkers have developed a palate for different roasting levels, from light to dark. They offer bagged beans with those drinkers in mind.

“Drink your coffee however you enjoy it,” Foglesong said. But with the single-source beans, drowning the coffee in sugar and creamer may defeat its purpose, he added.

A lighter roast lets more of the bean’s natural flavor through, Foglesong said.

In a darker roast, coffee drinkers get more of the “smoky burnt flavor,” Kivland added.

Once the website goes live, they will offer coffee beans to regional stores, restaurants, cafes and home customers for delivery or pickup, Kivland said. When a customer orders online, that is when the beans will be roasted, Foglesong added.

“The coffee stands out. It is just a matter of getting it in front of people and it speaks for itself,” Kivland said.