Julius Meinl The Originals

Our small-lot roasted blends and single-origins come together with the fascinating stories of farmers, roasters and baristas who, with their special expertise, have helped create them.

These are our bean stories. We’re proud to share them with you, as each one sheds light on how THE ORIGINALS attains its unique character and unforgettable taste. We hope these stories will impress and inspire coffee lovers around the world.

Watch our “bean-stories” below or click here to discover more about the coffees.

The best crops are often found on the steepest mountains, hidden among a thick old forest, nurtured by the volcanic soil and just the right microclimate.

Going to the plantations often means a trip of more than 72 hours, including eight hours bumping along in a truck. It also means getting to know the farmers who grow our coffee, to see in person that our coffees come from healthy branches with as many as eight buds instead of the usual five, to touch the cherries that have just been hand-picked at their ideal ripeness. For our green sourcing team, this is the greatest reward.

“Each visit to a coffee plantation is a great adventure, just like the trips on which my great grandfather embarked 155 years ago. (Back then,the journey took him a month instead of a day.) Being passionate about coffee, I want to know the
people who take care of it and to see first-hand how the beans are grown and processed. This is what Julius Meinl I did, and I’m proud to continue his legacy…”

We’d like to think roasting is an art with a bit of science. It’s a unique skill that’s easy to pick up but takes years to master.
Julius Meinl I started the first roastery in Europe a century-and-a-half ago, using a micro-batch roaster. Since then, his know-how and passion have been carried forward from generation to generation of the Meinl family.

“I started my career in Meinl as a roasting apprentice. Today, after 53 years, I know this roastery better than my home. Anyway, in my case, work and life are deeply intertwined. In fact, I met the love of my life here. Every day, I wake at 4:30 in order to warm up the roaster at 6:00. I enjoy those few quiet moments, when I have the roastery all to myself. Of course, I also love being with my colleagues. It feels great to see how passionate they are and to use my knowledge to help enhance their skills.”

The coffees used for Julius Meinl THE ORIGINALS are mostly roasted in Probat 5kg batch roasters. To achieve the best results, our roasting masters examine each batch carefully. They test and calibrate with multiple roasting profiles, using all their senses, before finally determining the ideal profile. Although advanced technology helps to record the profiles precisely, we still believe each batch should receive care at the personal level because various elements bring nuances to the taste, such as the weather on the day of roasting, the size of the batch and the status of the roaster.

Thus, the roasting master stays by that roaster throughout the day, pulling out a tiny sample of beans, examining them closely… Smelling them deeply … putting them back, and repeating. This process is performed again and again over the course of hours, almost hundreds of times a day, just as it has been done daily for years. Each pack of Julius Meinl THE ORIGINALS is roasted with the utmost care by our roasting master, who has signed this pack to personally certify its quality.

Blending is an explosion of creativity for our research-anddevelopment team. It helps them create unique complex tastes that cannot be achieved with single origins. However, it’s also a powerful tool to ensure consistency, because the same good old taste can be reproduced over and over again by combining the individual qualities of different origins, which may vary from season to season. To create the ideal blend, the team spends countless hours in testing and improvement. They begin by conceptualizing the taste, after which they choose specific origins and combine them. Then they try it out, calibrate the dosage and start again. Like adding strokes of different colours to paint a work of art, some blends are spontaneous but others take months to craft.

The ability to bring the best taste out of the best beans takes not only a good roast but also the appropriate grind level and brewing method. For example, the ability to pull a perfect shot of espresso depends on the adjustment of machine parameters, the character of the beans, the water quality and even the weather on a given day. This is why our trainers and quality managers visit venues on demand or just for regular checkups. We’re more than happy to offer training to you and your team, because our ultimate pursuit is the perfect quality in cup.

“The sound of grinding, the movement of the coffee stream coming out of the spout… All of this presents a different poetry to me. One cannot learn in a class how to calibrate the machines to deliver the perfect coffee. Instead, it requires years of field experience. My father and grandfather worked with the Meinl family all of their lives. My grandfather even carried the coffee around on a moped with a trailer. Now times have changed, and tools have changed, but our passion remains as strong as ever.”