FRESH ROASTED COFFEE GROWN BY FARMERS WHO CARE ABOUT THEIR ENVIRONMENT AND THEIR COMMUNITY

About The Coffee

We opened Conscious Cup Coffee Roasters in 2006, in a small cafe and drive-thru in Crystal Lake IL. We jumped into the coffee industry head first. There were some things we all really cared about. First, we wanted to find, roast, and sell the absolute best coffees we could get our hands on.

There are a few ways that coffee roasters can buy coffee. The first and most popular way is from the many specialty coffee importers in the United States who travel the world in search of coffees to sell. Nowadays, most of the relationship between a roaster and an importer can happen online. Some roasters work to cultivate relationships directly with the people growing their coffee. These relationships are often facilitated and managed by an importer and can be beneficial for all parties.

We buy coffee from 3 or 4 importers at any given time. Every week we sample a variety of coffees from different countries around the world. We take note of the ones we really like. We’ll do this over the course of a few weeks before returning to the coffees we really liked for another sample. From these coffees we will curate our seasonal coffee offerings.

Some coffee origins we will buy from the same farms year-after-year. Like the Costa Rican Las Lajas, a fantastic processing operation focused on serving fine micro-lot, organic coffees, and for their experimental processing methods. Or we’ll contract a coffee like the Fair Trade Uganda Bukonzo, which is an award winning coffee from a Women’s Owned Cooperative. We were the first US roaster to import this coffee and in 2017 our Bukonzo roast was selected among the world’s 30 best by Coffee Review.

Other coffee origins we will rotate between producers buying the highest rated and most desirable coffees we are sampling on our cupping table. For example, we rotate between the best (and always popular) Ethiopian Natural Processed coffees that become available in late spring and early summer.

We take a ton of pride sourcing the absolute best coffees we can, getting to know our producers and even travel to meet them.