Café Fraté, the 100% Lozère and solidarity roasting of Samuel Pages

Barista en devenir, Samuel promeut aussi les bonnes pratiques de préparation et de dégustation. Midi Libre – Sabrina Khenfer

At Bruel, the young company offers responsible, high-quality coffee.

"Crac !" It’s through this onomatopoeia that chemistry operates. "Alchemy",would no doubt tell you Samuel Pages, creator of Café Fraté, a young artisanal roasting company perched on the heights of Esclanèdes. This “crack” is that of the coffee bean when it loses its very last water molecule. A small bean arriving green from Africa or Latin America, still full of moisture and which it is up to the roaster to work on, from wanderings to errors, from attempts to successes, until the end of the day. rsquo;to obtain the perfect formula; the one that only belongs to him.

"Brate" for fraternity

A tropical scent and familiar to our daily lives, coffee is no less a serious business: it is to date the second most traded product in the world, after oil, while 125’ nbsp;millions of people around the world make a living from its culture. A 200 billion dollar market which does not impress Samuel Pages, a graduate in international economics, but whose ethics are too high for the big "coffee business" naturally pushed it towards a more virtuous sector, because it is supportive, social and ecological.

"We have chosen responsible sourcing, from small producers, with fair remuneration and working conditions that are favorable to them. We have included these standards, which are those of the social and solidarity economy, in our statutes." The company offers three ranges of products& nbsp;: "the Papé", imported from the Veracruz region in Mexico, "the Daronne", descended from the Colombian Andes and “the Minot”, originally from the area around Lake Kivu, in Congo.

A specialty coffee

Beyond ethics, Samuel takes care to ensure the intrinsic quality of the coffee he imports. Organic, always, but not only that. "The seeds, once packaged for export, are rated from 0 to 100 by the Specialty Coffee Association" , an international organization which has ensured since 1984 the constant improvement of the quality of the coffee flowing across the planet. "A product which obtains at least 80/100 is said to be specialty, because it meets certain criteria relating to the maintenance of the plots, virtuous picking techniques, good grain maturity… This is the case of "la Daronne", our Colombian coffee."

The art of roasting

Once the coffee has arrived in Lozère, it is up to Samuel Pages, armed with his technique and his five senses, to work on its transformation: &quot ;During cooking, sugar is transformed into carbon. It is the quantity of carbon which determines the bitterness of the coffee and the roasting time which gives its color to the bean. When I tested the Mexican, I found a better flavor with longer cooking and tasting in espresso format. For the Colombian, I opted for a medium roast: it enters at 195 °C and comes out around 197 °C, for a slightly tangy and tangy coffee. very aromatic. Congo, with its smaller fruits, requires less cooking. It is perfect in filter format and particularly tasty served warm."

You will have understood, at Café Fraté the grain is never abused at more than 200°C and it takes its time to develop its elegant shades of brown: fifteen to eighteen minutes, depending on the recipe. In comparison, manufacturers set their machines to nearly 1 000 °C, for smooth cooking in 1 min 30. A clear mistreatment, a real insult to the powerful taste and olfactory benefits of coffee& nbsp;: "We know that above 250 °C, it loses most of its aromas." Which is a great shame when we also know that, properly roasted, coffee contains more than 800 !

The facetious novelist Georges Courteline wrote: "One changes religion more easily than coffee!" That’was without counting on the arrival of Café Fraté, which is likely to make you revisit the most ritual of all your morning rituals.

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