Infused and enthused Local java aficionados brew up a more nuanced take on flavoured coffee By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Apr. 13, 2024

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This article was published 13/04/2024 (601 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What, pray tell, is infused coffee?

Without a doubt, that’s the No. 1 query put to Hayley Johnston and Thao Lam, whose business Toasti Bean Infused Coffee offers such intriguingly-named varieties of bean juice as chocolate-orange, apple crisp and Irish cream-truffle.

In response, the two friends usually let their French press do the talking, by offering curious parties a sample, which, in the case of their blueberry-pancakes entry, carries subtle hints of maple syrup, combined with undertones of crosswords on a lazy Sunday morning.

Another question they field regularly is how does infused coffee differ from flavoured coffee, Johnston says, seated in her neat-as-a-pin River Heights home, where a brewing pot of caramel sticky bun coffee, their top seller, is making the main floor smell like grandma’s kitchen.

Infused coffee means they are not adding anything after the fact, like artificial sweeteners, Lam pipes in. Instead, they combine spices and seasonings with locally roasted coffee beans they grind themselves, before letting the lot rest for a designated period, to allow everything to mesh.

“Our flavours aren’t overpowering, the way a pumpkin-spice (coffee) from one of the big guys tends to be,” Johnston contends, adding she often compares infused coffee to wine, in that she encourages people to sniff their beverage ahead of taking a sip, to decide for themselves what notes and nuances they’re picking up on.

“Honestly, we can’t count the number of times somebody has said no thanks, they don’t like flavoured coffee, only to go ‘oh, but I like this,’ after giving ours a shot.”

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Johnston and Lam would never have been mistaken for future coffee magnates when they met in 2010 at the University of Manitoba, where they were both enrolled at the Asper School of Business.

“I was raised very frugally, so I was always a make-it-at-home kinda gal, with whatever brand — Folgers, Maxwell House — my parents had in the pantry,” Johnston says.

For her part, Lam recalls sneaking swallows of her parents’ dark-roast Vietnamese coffee — “with condensed milk” — while growing up. It wasn’t until she and Johnston hit it off, though, that it became an 8 a.m. ritual to grab a cuppa joe, on their way to class.

That pattern continued after they graduated, and started working close to one another, near Portage and Main. Every morning, Monday to Friday, they would meet at a preferred spot in Winnipeg Square, and again, hours later, for an afternoon pick-me-up.

“Starbucks used to have this great 2 p.m., buy-one-get-one-free offer, so still with the frugalness,” Johnston says with a wink.

In March 2020, a certain worldwide pandemic put a temporary halt to their coffee dates. By then, Johnston had developed a creative streak when it came to cocktails and such. Now that she was forced to work remotely, she decided to experiment with coffee, by attempting to recreate some of the feature lattés she and Lam had been enjoying downtown.

“Some of the shops sell their syrups for home use, but that wasn’t what I was looking for,” Johnston says, noting she was experiencing inflammatory issues around that same time, and sugar was a big no-no. Instead, she began adding extracts and all-natural spices such as cardamom, ginger and nutmeg to ground coffee beans, in an effort to enhance the taste of the final brewed product.

Johnston acknowledges she wasn’t inventing the wheel. After all, cinnamon coffee made precisely the same way has been around for eons. Additionally, respected publications such as Bon Appetit were touching on that very subject, in articles titled You Should Add Spices to Your Coffee Grounds and 16 Spices to Elevate Your Regular Cup of Coffee.

Here’s the thing, though: while conducting her research, Johnston learned that infused coffee had a bad rap, owing to producers who attempted to mask the flavour of subpar coffee beans with this, that or another thing. She became determined not to fall into that same trap.

She guesses she tried close to 20 different beans before settling on a few that suited her palate, ones that were “a bit more classic, mild and chocolatey.” Now that she had a starting point, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work, making sure to invite her pal to join her, the moment COVID-related restrictions were relaxed that summer, and people were allowed to mingle in small groups.

“What was the word everybody was using back then? Their ‘bubble?’ That was us,” Lam says with a laugh.

By October 2020, Johnston and Lam had settled on four separate combinations, including white chocolate-mint and the aforementioned caramel sticky bun. Figuring their coffee would be a perfect gift ahead of the holidays, they packaged a slew for friends and family who, after trying it, couldn’t tell the pair fast enough that they should be selling it commercially… which was precisely what they began to do, in December of that same year.

“It’s always appreciated when people from your immediate circle support you, but within a matter of days, we were dropping coffee off all over town, to complete strangers who found us through Instagram,” says Johnston, who has since converted her backyard garage into a licensed food-handling facility. “Thao and I were like ‘whoa, people really want to buy our coffee. This is nuts.’”

Genny Sacco-Bak is the host of Coffee with Genny B, a podcast that spills the beans on all-things-java, in and around the city. Flavoured coffee has never been her jam, so she was somewhat skeptical when she visited Toasti Bean’s booth at a pop-up event, two years ago.

“(Flavoured coffee) always tasted fake and left an unpleasant taste in my mouth, plus I prefer straight-up dark roast,” says Sacco-Bak, who made a bit of a media splash in 2019 when she hit 60 different coffee spots in 60 days, in celebration of her 60th trip around the sun. She was pleasantly surprised, however, when she took a whiff of Johnston and Lam’s imperial cookie coffee — imperial cookies just so happen to be her favourite biscuit — through a degassing valve present on the resealable package.

“I could pick out the tasting notes of vanilla and raspberry and liked the aroma so much, I tried it and bought a bag,” she continues. “I take all my coffee with cream but for that one, I drink it black.”

To be clear, something like Toasti Bean’s red velvet cake coffee doesn’t carry components common to said treat, such as cream cheese or scarlet food colouring. Same deal with their pistachio-ice cream offering. Rather, individual mixtures’ names correspond to the feeling each evoked, when Johnston and Lam sampled it themselves, during the development phase.

“I think if we were trying to make something that tasted exactly like this or that, it would be much more difficult,” says Lam, noting they’re currently up to 20 varieties, including decaf versions. “For us, it’s much easier to name something after the fact, by going ‘oh, this reminds me of pecan butter tarts.’”

In an effort to support other female entrepreneurs, Johnston and Lam presently source their coffee beans from women-run co-operatives in Mexico and Central America. Sure, they dream about operating a café of their own one day, but for the time being, they’re content selling through their website (toastibean.com) and at select retailers, including Mottola Grocery, in the Hargrave Street Market. (On Apr. 14, they’ll be at Lucky Girl’s pop-up market at the Centennial Concert Hall. They are also registered vendors at Third + Bird’s spring event, being held at Red River Exhibition Park, Apr. 19-21.)

They look at each other and grin when asked if their regular customers consider Toasti Bean an indulgence to be enjoyed on special occasions, or as their daily, err, grind.

“I feel it’s more of a weekend treat, but I can definitely get behind anybody who wants to drink it seven days a week,” Johnston says, bending down to top up everyone’s mug.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca