commonly coffee

How fitting, right?!

I’ll be honest, it would just seem wrong to feature any other roaster other than Canada’s own, September Coffee for this month’s Coffee Roaster of the Month feature. It just makes sense.

But it’s not just because of their namesake that I wanted to share their story. This still relatively new coffee roaster is the passion project of Kyle Rowsell and his wife Natasha, a well-known and greatly-appreciated YouTuber-turned-Coffee Roaster.

I’ve known Kyle for a few years now and had the privilege of meeting up with him this past spring in Portland at SCA EXPO. It has been incredible watching not only his accounts grow numerically, but watching Kyle as he has grown from humble beginning as “Brew At Home Blog” on IG (I’m really dating myself here) to his YouTube channel to now being a specialty coffee roaster.

So I was thrilled when I reached out to see if he’d let me have the opportunity to share his story on my own blog…and he gave me a resounding yes. So here it is, the story of September Coffee…take it away Kyle & Natasha.

Hey Kyle & Natasha, so great to get the chance to connect with you! Introduce yourselves to our readers.

Thanks Tyler! We’re Kyle & Natasha, a team of two based in Ottawa, Ontario. We have a very unconventional introduction into the industry that I’m sure we’ll chat about later in this interview. We both founded September Coffee Company in 2022 and are currently running this operation as a small (but mighty) team sharing coffees that we love from producers and farmers we adore. I (Kyle) am also a full time Specialty Coffee YouTuber. Yes, it’s a thing! At least I’ve convinced myself that it is. We’re also parents to two little ones in Brooklyn and Beckam. 

So perhaps for many people reading this they’ve gotten to know you through your great social media (IG, YouTube) content but how did you both get into specialty coffee?

I feel our story getting into specialty was one that many home enthusiasts share. We found a unique cafe in the city that our friends had sworn was the place to visit, and they brewed us a blueberry bomb Ethiopia. This lead us down the rabbit hole off passionate pursuit. Shortly before the pandemic I started a blog about specialty coffee called Brew at Home. The goal was to help educate home brewers with the wealth of knowledge I hoarded from many many years of learning, obsession, forum searching and community in the industry. This blog slowly evolved into an Instagram mini blog where I’d post daily photos with tips and ideas about home brewing. Eventually the natural progression was to take to Youtube to expand the growing audience of home brewers, and here we are today. 

Speaking of social media, what led you to begin creating content? Can you share a bit of the backstory to how this all began, and what that journey was like in seeing your following grow over the course of the last few years. 

It started as an outlet to share what I was already sharing with so many in my personal circle. I thought it would be an easy way to link to the stuff I had kept repeating over in personal conversations. When the pandemic hit, this created an environment where everyone was seeking for this information to brew better coffee at home. I guess in some ways I was lucky and my timing was impeccable. But truthfully a lot of time and effort went into sharing this information and growing the online community. More than I had originally signed up for. Posting something unique and informative every day was no small task. This was why I transitioned to YouTube as the content posted there lasts for more than a day or two on the feed, but for years. And this seemed to be the best use of my time. But in hindsight I was only able to do this because we were all locked down. Otherwise my full time job would not have allowed me to start the blog, the social media accounts or start Youtube, at least not with the excellence and consistency we strived for. 

So how did it come about then to decide to make the shift from full-time employment outside of coffee, to going all-in with creating content and ultimately launching a coffee roastery?

It wasn’t easy. For context, most coffee professionals and industry friends started in coffee and grew a passion from there. Our introduction was the opposite. We were incredibly passionate about specialty coffee before it was a profession. We were the optimistic obsessive home baristas, not the under appreciated professional barista looking to work their way to the next position in coffee. And I’m extremely grateful for this, as it is a privileged position and has allowed us to approach September Coffee with an optimistic and positive (maybe naive) outlook and unique fresh perspective, we believe, and allows us to do things the way we feel is best for the business with the perspective of a home barista first. As that is our largest audience and consumer base. 

Going all in started by coming to terms with my purpose in my current employment. The role there was working in a Church as a Youth Pastor and my time of purpose in that position was closing and I was either going to navigate to another position in a neighbouring organization within the same field, stay in my current role suffering passion and purpose, or leave it all together and go full time into coffee, a opportunity allowed to me by the constant pursuit of content creation and YouTube. 

As our family was growing and our kids are in their younger years we felt the best opportunity to best serve our family was growing the YouTube channel and business, and starting a micro-roaster to fit under the umbrella of the main channel. We did not, however, foresee that September would have the interest that it did. Our kickstarter for September was the determining factor of how much time and effort we would commit to September Coffee Co.

Maybe our readers are curious, because I know I am…what was the inspiration behind choosing the name September Coffee? 

It’s funny, we get asked this all the time but have been slow to give a public response. The name has deep meaning for us personally, and for our businesses timelines. On the surface we love the month of September as it symbolizes the transition from Summer to Fall. A time when a warm coffee is soup for the soul. We have personally associated coffee with cooler weather, even though we drink it everyday of the year, and felt September was a fitting name to represent our personal impressions on a cup of coffee. But to go deeper into the meaning on a personal level, Kyle’s birthday is in September. Our oldest child’s birthday is also September. Further, a few years ago we lost one of our children in a miscarriage in the month of September. We also founded the company in September, and roasted for our first wholesale client in September. Kyle and I met in the month of September. We could go on, but it will bore your readers. 

Needless to say, it’s a meaningful month and a word one we feel represents coffee well. 

So, your home-base is Ottawa, ON (Canada). Can you tell us a little bit more about what the specialty coffee community is like there? What do you love?

Ottawa is unique. For those who aren’t aware Ottawa is geographically centred between Toronto and Montreal. Two very large cities that have many specialty roasters and cafes. Ottawa is also the capital city of Canada and has very political roots. 

The coffee scene in Ottawa is good, but we feel has a lot more potential. This coffee scene has grown over the past six to eight years with some newer cafes and roasters but I can’t help but feel that for a city of this size there’s still lots of potential that I hope to see breached. I look to cities across Canada with similar population sizes as Ottawa but are respected not only nationally but internationally in the industry and have represented Canada in the international cafe and on the world stage, and I hope that we can see this to be true of Ottawa some day too. It’s a large reason we started September. Will we be this roaster? We hope to be. But we have our work cut out for us. 

For now I remain optimistic in the small community of professionals in Ottawa to educate, build and grow the specialty coffee community. The coffee scene is widely dominated by a handful of cafes that are mostly corporate owned. With a handful of amazing multi roaster cafes and self roasted cafes that lead the way. 

You’ve done such a great job at sharing through your socials about the entire process of become a coffee roastery…but what have been some of the behind-the-scenes experiences that people might not know or realize go into the day-to-day operations of doing this full-time?

We’re averaging 12-14 hour days 4 days a week with a flex day on Fridays for content creation. Starting a roaster is no small task and has eaten a lot of our time and ability to pump out new content on YouTube. But we’ve established some new systems to allow us to be far more efficient. 

I saw that you recently took delivery of a Loring S7 Nightwawk. What led you to choose this roaster for September? Can you share more about what kinds of coffees people can expect to enjoy now that it’s operational? Or perhaps share a bit of your philosophy of roasting?

I’ve always been a fan of Loring Roasters. They are, in my opinion, the best roasters money can buy. We wanted a roaster that was efficient, had the ability to use automation, was a hybrid/air roaster for their clean roast profiles, and was better for the environment than a traditional drum roaster without an afterburner. 

The Loring checked all the boxes. We had the opportunity to buy a new S7 with a fairly quick turn around time to have it delivered which is uncommon for Lorings, so we jumped on this opportunity. 

I noticed on your website your core mission is to “share coffee we love.” So perhaps share with our readers, what coffees you’re drinking and loving at the moment!

Right now we’re sipping on our subscription offering from Nestor Lasso. This coffee is bright, extremely floral and very juicy. It’s a treat! 

So to wrap things up, what’s on the horizon for September Coffee? Any thoughts on a café? Or feel free to share anything else you’d like to inform our readers on.

We are excited to be celebrating a year since being founded. And will be celebrating our first year of business on December 9th. We’re very grateful for the community and are exited to open a part time espresso bar at the front of house for customers to try our coffee and offer local pick up.

Long term we want to continue building relationships with producers around the globe, featuring their coffee seasonally. And we’re excited to open our espresso bar at the front of house for customers in the near future. 

__________________________________________

Contact Info:

web: www.september.coffee
instagram: @september.coffee.co
youtube: www.youtube.com/@KyleRowsell

Find their beans: If you’re looking to get your hands on some beans then definitely check out their web-store for what they’re currently roasting. 

__________________________________________

I just want to say a huge thank you to Kyle & Natasha at September for being such a huge contributor to the coffee culture in Ottawa and across Canada. Check out their site, grab yourself some beans, and enjoy! 

Stay Caffeinated,

Tyler