ILSE: Coffee Roaster
On cold, snowy days when school did not keep, I used to help my grandfather with his milk route. Invariably, I would get cold jumping in an out of the open-doored truck he drove and he would favor me with a forbidden treat—a cup of coffee heavily laced with milk and sugar—at Johnny’s Restaurant.
Johnny’s was located in the same building as Jim’s Garage on Railroad Street in Canaan but it has been decades since it has been an eatery. Indeed, even the garage was closed several years ago and converted to an antiques shop.
Now the garage has taken on a very 21st-century persona. Gone is the smell of petrol and grease, replaced by the delicious smell of roasting coffee. The brick walls are scrubbed clean and sunlight streams into the space through oversize windows. Light blond benches and a narrow wooden bar separate the stainless-steel roaster from the customer area.
Behind the counters are an attractive young couple who decided to move their business from Stanford to Canaan a year ago. The move was couched in Rebecca Grossman’s familiarity with the area. Raised in the Berkshires, she frequently brought her boyfriend, Lucas Smith, with her when she visited family.
“We wanted to move our business and always had our eye on this place, even though it wasn’t up for a lease,” Smith said. “We got the owner’s number and were able to work out a deal.”
The couple had operated their specialty coffee business, ILSA, in Stamford since 2019, roasting and selling specialty coffees to the wholesale market. They buy their coffee beans from small farmers in nine countries, primarily in South American, Mexico and Africa. “Right now, we get most of our coffee beans from Columbia and Ethiopia,” he said. “Coffee is seasonal, so we rotate what we sell.”
They carefully select the coffees they purchase from samples sent to them by an agent. “We try them and decide which ones we want to buy. With a small farmer, we may buy an entire crop but if it is a larger producer we may only purchase part of it.”
And what coffee it is. On their website they list some of their providers and the qualities of the coffee they provide. Take for instance, Daniel Ortega, a lifelong coffee producer who lives just outside San Agustin, a town in the Andes in western Colombia. He grows pink bourbon and tabi beans which Smith says, feature “lovely flavors of licorice and pomegranate with a bright and jammy sweetness.”
On August 28th, the couple was roasting its second release from a cooperative in Kirinyaga, Kenya. Smith terms the coffee “bright and vibrant … tasting of red and white and currants, rhubarb and amaro.”
“It has a mouthwatering acidity and lovely sweetness with complexity that builds as it cools,” he said.
Delivering the coffee beans to retailers is a labor-intensive process, according to ISLE’s website. The fruit that contains the “beans” are called cherries. They are picked at peak ripeness and sent to the factory where they are hand sorted. The under-ripe or damaged cherries are removed, the fruit is pulped, its skins fermented overnight. Ultimately it is mixed with cow manure and used as fertilizers by the coffee producers.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the beans are being roasted in a former garage on Railroad Street, packaged in 12-ounce bags with sleek graphics, and sold to a wide range of coffee lovers. They range in price from $24 to $26 dollars.
Smith says he and Grossman look forward to expanding their business even further. They hope to take over the remaining space in the building still used as an antiques store. Ironically, it is the space formerly occupied by Johnny’s Restaurant.
“We would love to have a real café and store,” Smith says.
Canaan has struggled toward a revitalization in recent years with the downtown building being rejuvenated and the town attracting more upscale businesses. Smith noted the renewed energy in Canaan’s downtown and observed that the town just needs “more young energy.”
That energy seems to be at work with entrepreneurs such as Kyle Considine, who has invested heavily in downtown properties, the new owners of the Colonial Theater and Smith and Grossman themselves believing in the future of the town.
