Baby Sweet Coffee: it’s a lot like wine

Jeff Burling and Tiffany MacIsaac, co-proprietors of Baby Sweet Coffee, didn’t initially set out to be in the business of coffee roasting. It was their company, Toronto Micro Weddings, that serendipitously provided an opportunity to sell wedding favours in addition to their primary services.

Eventually, word spread on the quality. Though generating additional profit had been the goal, a passion had been unearthed within Jeff, who now oversees roasting, selling and marketing.

I came across their project through my partner, who met Jeff while working in hospitality - a part-time job he still keeps as the brand grows.

We all remember certain idioms from childhood, drilled into us by our elders. Mine is a quote from my Dad - “find your passion” - a beacon always guiding me through life’s highs and lows. When I meet others who subscribe to this same ethos, it’s hard not to feel like a moth to a flame.

Meeting Jeff was like looking into a mirror. Bursting at the seams with unbridled excitement, coupled with the earnestness of a child, he reminded me of myself talking about wine, and my many industry friends plagued with that same itch: passion.

Jeff sent us a few bags to try. I approached my first sip with a healthy level of skepticism as I do with anything new-to-me. Having been given one too many bad bottes of homemade wine - I know better at this point to blindly trust when I’m told something “is really good!”

That first cup of Baby Sweet coffee blew me away, and I haven’t been able to shut up about how good their beans are since. I commissioned Jeff to make a bespoke roast for my wine club members, and it’s the staple coffee in our pantry now.

Read on to learn more about Jeff, coffee, and how they plan to grow the brand.

Tell me about your business. 

We’re a digital coffee retailer / micro-roastery (www.babysweetcoffee.ca) who are on a mission to show Canadians that a big, rich, flavorful cup doesn’t have to come at the sacrifice of balance, sweetness or terroir. 

On one side we have your typical “Big Brand Joes” where quality is measured by the intensity of notes such as carbon and char, and the other where terroir is placed above all else resulting in an experience that is often more tea like than coffee. 

We’re taking a middle of the road approach that has many of our clients happily giving up their Tim Hortons or Starbucks, often saying they’re using less milk and sugar not realizing coffee didn’t have to be bitter.  Basically, we’re roasting nuanced coffee that can be endlessly enjoyed everyday; crushable daily drivers if you will ;)

We also have a popular custom coffee wedding and event favour service.  At weddings for example, each guest takes home either a 50, 100 or 250 gram bag of specialty grade coffee that is freshly roasted for the big day.  We create custom labels colour matched to the event and include a personalized message from the couple.  They’re a lot of fun.    

Why coffee? 

I sort of took it as a fact of life that the coffee I make at home will always suck compared to the cups from my favourite cafes. 

Eventually though, the desire to save money took hold and I bought an Aeropress and started buying higher quality pre-ground beans for home.  I didn’t realize this until later on, but making coffee every morning for my girlfriend (...and now wife) became the best part of my day. 

The Aeropress is a very flexible and forgiving brewer with countless “recipes” each attempting to get the most out of a given coffee. Every morning I’d eagerly await my partner's opinion on how today’s coffee tasted.  There’s just something beautiful about taking a moment to stop and be thoughtful as you enjoy a cup of coffee together. 

Eventually I would hit a wall, no longer being able to improve on my technique, and still falling short of the cafe quality.  I realized pre-ground coffee was very convenient but would grow stale fairly quickly leaving me with 2/3rds a bag of coffee with faded flavour.  So I bought a quality hand grinder, and I was back in business, with even better results than before because I now had freshness on my side. 

From equipment, to technique, to the coffee itself and how it was roasted, I learned a lot along the way and got to share my discoveries with my wife.  Ultimately I realized that, to me, coffee is about connection, and the simple joy of sharing a delicious cup of coffee with those I love led me all the way to controlling all the variables I could through roasting the coffee myself. 

What was once a pursuit just for us, is now a passion we are both happy to share with others as the mindfulness of drinking a beautiful cup of coffee every day, even when in a hurry, is one of life’s greatest joys. 

What's a common misconception people have about the category of coffee? 

The biggest one is that darker is better.  In the end - it is about what you prefer - but if we’re to look at the mainstream commodity coffee world (coffee that scores between 65-80 out of 100), roasting dark is often just a strategy to either cover up flavor defects, or to add flavor by charring a bean that inherently doesn’t have much going on in terms of terroir (i.e. favourable, regionally unique flavours). 

Since most people drink coffee with milk/cream and sugar (the irony being that, by and large, it’s because these coffees taste horrible black), these seared flavours really punch through the dairy. Whereas a light roast would seem less “flavorful” by comparison.   

What styles/regions are you excited about right now? 

I’m currently learning about coffee from The Democratic Republic of the Congo and how a younger generation is leveraging technology to produce a better product and gaining access to broader markets.  It’s a country whose history of colonialism and multinational corporate involvement has left locals with little control (and benefit) over the precious natural resources they extract.  I’m excited to purchase green (raw) coffee from there someday.  

We’re also very interested in Washed and Natural coffees from Guatemala at the moment.  We recently tried a Washed bean that had complex notes of chocolate, caramel and candied apple.  It was a conversation starter, yet very easy going and drinkinable at the same time.  

What cafes are killing it in Toronto at the moment? 

As we are based in North York I have to give a shout out to Another Land Cafe.  They have such a lovely list of coffees available for pour-over, there’s always something new to taste there.  

People often draw a correlation of wine to coffee - can you go into detail about what the similarities, but also differences, are? 

Wine and coffee have much in common.  Take the actual growing of coffee for instance.  Coffee beans aren’t actually beans - rather the seed of a coffee cherry.  Coffee plants are carefully grown and picked when the cherry reaches a desired ripeness much like the grapes on a vineyard.  The amount of rain, mineral composition of the soil, and sunlight all come into play and the impact in the final cup is basically what we, too, refer to as terroir.  Much like wine, the same coffee from the same plot can taste very different from year to year. 

Culturally we see similarities as well.  We have those who embrace innovation and unconventional practices and those who think it is simply wrong.  In coffee, we are seeing a lot of experimentation with unusual fermentation methods such as carbonic maceration, lactic fermentations, cold fermentations, the use of specific cultures etc.  And this sometimes helps the coffee grade a higher score, imparting lovely if not unusual flavors!  I think we see a similar reaction with Natural wines, some are simply against it because of dogma and to others it’s how it tastes in the glass that matters!  There’s also others who are in between, and are neither against innovation nor for it and it all comes down to taste. Sometimes the coffee or wine is wonderful, sometimes it’s interesting, but you probably couldn’t drink a whole lot of it and other times it’s just not for you at all…and that’s ok!

I do think one of the biggest differences in wine and coffee is that quality wine has existed (and to some perfected) for a very long time…and perhaps that’s the push back with “innovation” or rather the re-discovering of more timeless natural wine making strategies depending on how you want to look at it. 

In my opinion, every wine category has its winners and losers, and just because you tried some natural wines you didn't like, doesn’t mean you can completely invalidate an entire category because you will certainly miss out on its winners…and winners it has in spades. 

Coffee is different in the sense that we have never experienced quality on a mass scale in history, and the result either leads people down a rabbit hole of delicious discovery, or the old guard to simply say “well this doesn’t taste like coffee!”. 

To relate it to the craft beer world, I’ve seen people look down on drinkers of lagers and pilsners with their crazy hop forward citrusy/grapefruity/floral India Pale Ales, and I think there’s a bit of that going on in the coffee world with specialty vs commodity. 

That’s exactly why I want to roast coffee that doesn’t make the old guard feel excluded or shamed for their tastes, but rather welcome them in with open arms, giving them something familiar and rewarding them with a new sense of what quality coffee is at the same time.   

Have you ever paired coffee with any dishes that were particularly successful? 

If you have a kitchen-aid, buy the ice-cream bowl.  Make a small amount of coffee concentrate (VERY strong coffee) on an aeropress, add vanilla extract, liquid stevia, sea salt, 2 egg yolks, whipping cream and 3% Milk.  Bam, an incredibly tasty treat that won’t spike the old blood sugar ;) 

Coffee is also an excellent addition to any BBQ sauce.  

How do people buy your coffee?

Please visit www.babysweetcoffee.ca.  We offer free local delivery within the Toronto area, and free Canada-Wide shipping on orders over $60.00