From small farms to your cup: What it takes to make that one cup of fresh coffee

OAKVILLE - As a stream of roasted coffee beans drops into a barrel, it fills an Oakville, Ont., roastery with a smell practically strong enough to caffeinate you. 

The roasted beans, now a rich, deep brown, were once small and green, bagged in large burlap sacks and shipped to Canadian ports from the coffee-producing countries of Ethiopia, Colombia and Brazil. 

It's at Reunion Coffee Roasters where they find their defining character. The strength of your brew and whether it will taste fruity or earthy is methodically decided at the roastery's lab, where they sample various beans and perfect the taste.

Walking through his roughly 50,000 sq. ft. roastery, Reunion president Adam Pesce points out industry-scale machines where the green beans are washed, weighed and roasted to get the preferred colour, flavour and aroma.