Our Company

MEET THE TEAM

Brown Bag Coffee Roasters consists of hard working individuals that aim to bring you quality products in a timely manner, and LOVE doing what they do.

Shann

Despite earning his living in the tech industry for nearly two decades, Shann Bosnell (pronounced Shawn) wanted to forge a new entrepreneurial path when he decided to strike out on his own in December 2016.

Even though Shann's job was helping customers manage technology, his passion was coffee. Shann had been roasting beans in his Gatineau home for several years on a small 1 lbs drum roaster, supplying friends and family with coffee. The decision to jump into the coffee-roasting business was a natural evolution and Brown Bag Coffee Roasters was born.

Christiaan

Born and raised in South Africa, Christiaan worked as a barista and roaster's assistant in a roastery café. In 2018 he met Shann and since then, the two have shared their passion for coffee and the various processes the beans undergo during their "lifespan" with great admiration. In 2020 Christiaan joined Brown Bag Coffee Roasters' production team as Head Roaster where he roasts coffee (surprise, surprise), experiments with profiles through cuppings and offers up his barista skills for training to wholesale customers and individual clients alike.

Dana

Dana is a graphic designer by trade and applies herself amazingly well to any of Brown Bag Coffee Roasters' needs. All those amazing graphics on our socials? Yup, that's Dana. Not only is she a wiz with a mouse and keyboard, she's a wonderful artist and great designer and builder. She did such good work with the typography on our walls and helped with all aspects of building our latest space. Come and see for yourself!

Kianna

At 17 years old, Kianna is the majority owner of ManSoap Company (the sister company of BBCR); an organic soap making company catering to men and women who are looking for self care products free of harmful chemicals. Kianna has also been roasting, bagging and delivering coffee for Brown Bag Coffee Roasters since its inception. Kianna is a jack-of-all-trades and a force to be reckoned with in the business world. We are certainly lucky to have her skill and work ethics on our side!

But these are just words on a screen, come to the studio for your next coffee or book a studio tour for you and your friends and meet us in person - we'd love to chat with you about our passions and yours.

Sincerely,

The BBCR Team

OUR ROASTERS

The heart of our roasting operations! What started as one, quickly grew to two. Then four. And now we boast a 10lb Artisan XE Deluxe with a 55lb/hour roasting capacity and state of the art data collection software that allows us to capture up to 6 different readings at once. This allows repeatability ensuring we provide stunning consistency with every roast. The Artisan XE utilizes Fluid Bed technology, bringing top notch industry standards that you have come to expect from Brown Bag Coffee Roasters. The roaster is manufactured by our partner, Coffee Crafters, recognized as producing some of the highest quality roasters using the latest technologies currently available.

artisanXe

While we have increased our roasting capacity, we still employ our 2lb Sonofresco machines which are capable of small batch roasting and sample roasting. They allow us to monitor and manipulate select characteristics of each bean by allowing us to create roast profiles unique to Brown Bag Coffee Roasters before production.

As mentioned above, all our roasters use fluid bed technology. What does that mean?

There are two major technologies used to roast coffee in the world today. Drum Roasting and Fluid Bed roasting. Fluid bed is a newer technology developed in the 1970s. These machines produce a stream of heated air from below the beans allowing them to roast and remove the outer coating of the bean - called the chaff. In traditional drum roasters more chaff remains in the drum during roasting and bakes onto the walls of the drum, which promotes carcinogenic properties roasted onto your coffee. We are able to remove and clean our roast chamber, allowing the beans to develop a much brighter flavour profile which is typically sought after in a drip, pour over or french press. Compared to drum roasters, fluid bed technology is significantly more energy efficient, allowing for less wasted energy and heat production.

Each of these roasters is connected to a computer and through the use of specialized software we are able to control the amount of heat applied precisely over time. With this specialized equipment in place, we can dial in the exact qualities of each bean to bring out the best each has to offer. Very few roasters can claim the level of control we have over our roast profiles.

You can rest assured that delivering you the highest and healthiest quality coffee is our top priority which we have thought about since our very inception, and not as an afterthought.

Want to see them in action? We invite you to reach out to book a studio tour, and roast up some fresh coffee as you get a first hand look at what we are up to.