Nerja Coffee Roasters

´´ My name is Kerry Patten, and I am the co-owner of Nerja Coffee Roasters. My husband and I moved to Spain in May 2022. We travelled around Spain for 3 months, and after about a month I hadn’t found a coffee to my liking! So at that moment, we decided that we really wanted to focus on changing that!

We sell our coffee online and at markets and get feedback about our coffee all the time, so I have learned that coffee is so subjective. For me, it’s such an exciting subject because there are so many ways to make, brew and drink coffee. Most people drink coffee for energy. That’s usually a consensus; however, how you drink it tends to be incredibly cultural, with so many of the cultural reasons going way back. So, for example, the English tend to drink a lot of instant. Instant coffee was brought to England during war times from America. The Spanish also have remnants of a wartime tradition which is called Torrefacto coffee. This is a practice of preserving bad-quality coffee by burning sugar around the coffee. This practice is carcinogenic and makes the coffee extremely bitter. However, the Spanish are accustomed to drinking their coffee this way although it can lead to a double amount of sugar as many have to add sugar to their coffee to make it palatable or alternatively, if you just take a quick espresso-type shot,  you get it over with quickly. Some of the immigrants that come here to Spain also love this type of coffee. You will see it in the supermarkets labelled as Mezcla, which means it is mixed with some natural coffee. 

Being Irish, we are accustomed to drinking our coffee as a longer drink, unlike the Italians who shot their coffee! For this reason, it becomes more noticeable if coffee tastes burnt. I do feel that I spend a lot of time educating people that coffee can have delicious flavour notes and profiles, but it’s important to understand that this will only be in freshly roasted coffee. As a business owner, I feel that I am probably stunting my business opportunities by not choosing to enter shops where I would worry about how long my coffee would sit on a shelf. I am choosing a direct-to-customer model as without chemicals & preservatives, your coffee is going to be at its best for the first 6 weeks. With freshly roasted there are actually many health benefits to coffee, such as antioxidants, vitamins & minerals and 3-4 cups of coffee a day is actually shown to help reduce many diseases, particularly heart disease. However, for me, I really caution you to understand that like all of our food nowadays, there are different qualities. The research indicates that a medium roast is better than a dark roast. Natural coffee that you need to brew is better than instant & capsules. Arabica is better than Robusta, which tends to have too much caffeine in it for a lot of people and can lead to side effects. I encourage you to find a roaster to buy from. You will find that they will write their roast dates on the packet. All the time, new quick and easy machines are coming to the market to help brew coffee quicker, such as Aeropress´s or bean-to-cup machines which even grind coffee for you. So that you can enjoy these freshly roasted coffees. Of course grinding in the moment is always going to be best, but most coffee roasters will also do this for you. Let me finish by adding that coffee can be stored in the freezer to prolong the freshness. Otherwise, a cool, dry place is best, but not the fridge.´´