Intelligentsia Roasting Works adventure

This weekend's adventure starts off at Intelligentsia's Roasting Works tour in a neighbourhood close to the United Centre (Ashland and Lake). The neighbourhood was a bit scary where factories or auto repair shops lined the streets and even parking lots were fenced with barb wire.

As we walked from the Green line, you could hardly notice the entrance to the Roasting Works as it was just this non-descript building with a single steel door and a small tin sign leaning next to it.


The Roasting Works looked like a small production but it turns out they churn out some 10,000 pounds of coffee on Mondays and Tuesdays but production does slow as the week progresses. They have three sizes of roasters to accommodate desired production size.


Coffee is grown in bands just within the Tropics (Central/South America, Africa, Sumatra region). They keep large sacks of fresh coffee bought from various cooperatives and microlots around the world.


Our favourite Intelligentsia coffee is the Tres Santos Colombia which is the best Colombian coffee we've had.

They still have some left.


On our tour today, they roasted a coffee from Rwanda right in front of us. One can only imagine how incredible this coffee story is for a country with such a violent history.

Once the coffee is roasted, it is cooled and bits of stuff like stones are "filtered" out.


Then, it's stored in large gray bins.


The final product (showing various stages of the roasting - from green to dark brown). Every person on the tour got a half pound bag for free!


Once the tour was over, we had a delicious lunch at VTK and headed back to Lakeview. We went to a DIY framing place where we had a great arts-and-crafts afternoon by making our own version of what the Intelligentsia Roasting Works office had up on their walls.


Thanks to the burlap sacks we managed to get from the nice people at the factory, check out our brand new wall art!