The joy of coffee with Acadian flare
Brûlerie Du Vieux Moulin is a new roasted coffee business in Meteghan Centre
Lise and Brad LeJeune are self-proclaimed coffee geeks. They'll be the first to tell you there is lot of fun to be had with coffee – whether you're drinking it, accessorizing it, or, as they're now doing, roasting it.
With a new business – Brûlerie Du Vieux Moulin coffee – operating from their Meteghan Centre home, they hope the fun catches on.
Coffee has always interested Lise. In the late 1990s, she and her brother Marc Robichaud bought and operated a coffee shop in Wolfville. But a bakery next door caught fire, spreading to the neighbouring businesses, including theirs. Everything was lost.
Well, not everything.
Lise always knew she'd get back into the coffee business.
She started thinking about it again in recent years.
“Then the pandemic hit and everything started closing down,” she says. “There was no point of opening a café when you can't have customers.”
It gave her time to ponder things. The more she thought about it, the more her Acadian culture kept seeping in.
“I'm big on Acadie,” she says. “For me, my family, our Acadian culture is huge.”
Instead of a café, she decided to become a coffee roaster after discovering there were no Acadian coffee roasting businesses in Nova Scotia.
“If we were to have a coffee shop, we'd want to get our coffee from Acadians,” she says. “There's Acadian people who are involved in coffee, but they don't promote themselves in French. The titles of their business are not French. Their products are in English.”
The more she kept researching, the more she kept coming across this word: Brûlerie.
“In Quebec and France, a brûlerie is as common as a Starbucks or a Second Cup. They're all over the place. It just means coffee roster,” she says.
So Lise and her husband Brad decided to start one.
Enter their business:
Brûlerie Du Vieux Moulin.
“I don't care if the word is hard to pronounce, people will get used to it,” Lise says with a laugh, although there is a serious side to her thinking as well.
“In our world, losing our language is a big deal. We've become assimilated by
English,”
she says. “The only reason people don't know the word brûlerie here is it's hard to pronounce. It's just easier to pick the English title.”
The couple is running their coffee roasting business out of the basement level of their Meteghan Centre home. The space is a work in progress, but so far, so good.
In addition to the roasted coffee they sell, they've set up a retail portion that sells coffee accessories. You can even buy a Chemex. “In the movies, this is what James Bond makes his coffee with,” Lise says.
The coffee is roasted using a fluid air roaster containing a barrel drum. If during the roasting process it reminds you of a popcorn machine, you're not alone.
It's efficient, too. It only takes about 12 minutes to roast up to 10 pounds of coffee.
The couple is selective when it comes to sourcing their coffee beans.
“As much as we can we try to get ethically sourced, fairly
traded. We make sure the farmers on the co-ops are well treated and well paid and the coffee itself is good,” Lise says.
They source coffee from Brazil, Honduras, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Indonesia and Columbia. They're very excited about the Haitian coffee they'll have.
Their coffee – which includes light, medium and dark roasts – is packaged with French (and some English) languaging. A very important part of the packaging information is the date on which it was roasted.
“The big goal for us is getting people to change their perception about coffee. We can do something others can't and that's provide it fresh,” says Brad, noting if you buy instant coffee in a grocery store you don't know when it was roasted.
Adds Lise, “If you drink this fresh, it does taste different. Some coffees are so good you won't even want to put sugar or milk in it. You might say I can actually drink it straight up because it's really good.”
An official launch of
Brûlerie
Du Vieux
Moulin's coffee took place April 3 at Chez Jean in Belliveaus Cove. Owner Jean LeBlanc is pleased to be carrying the coffee.
“We have their coffee to sell and when somebody wants coffee that's the coffee we make now,” he says, saying they're happy to promote a product that is tapping into the Acadian culture.
Shane Robicheau also included the coffee at a recent plant-based tasting event at La Cuisine Robicheau in Saulnierville.
“We had our dessert paired with her coffee. We just wanted to showcase her new business and promote it,” he says, saying people liked it and expressed interest in it.
Robicheau says he's in the process of opening some Airbnb rental properties and intends to make the coffee complimentary for guests.
“We would love to see our coffee in restaurants, B&Bs and Airbnbs … and in some retail spaces, markets and shops,” says Lise. She also sees opportunity from the World Acadian Congress the municipalities of Clare and Argyle will be hosting in 2024.
“Thousands of people will be here and they drink coffee,” she says.
Traditionally, coffee roasting tends to be a male-dominated industry, so both Brad and Lise are proud to see her involved in it.
They also have goals for the future. Sometimes introducing herself as Lise à Camille à Ulysse à Élisée à Jean-Pierre Robichaud (it's an Acadian thing) Lise's great-grandfather was the founder of Le Vieux Moulin, a steam-powered grist mill that operated between 1912 and 1929. One day the couple hopes to bring the old mill back to life, blending the old with modern roasting techniques to create a local coffee. But that's down the road.
For now, they're looking forward to sharing their roasted coffee and love of coffee with the public.
“There are a lot of things that coffee geeks like Lise and I know that people don't know about,” says Brad. “If we can share that information, if we can share those products, that's what's going to make us happy.”
Lise says they're even looking to make videos and have public sessions on the joys of coffee.
“If you get right into it, it's fun,” she
says.
To learn more about this roasted coffee business visit the website: www.brulerieduvieuxmoulin.com