New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Silvermine Coffee Roasters settles into shop near Norwalk’s Waypointe
Ask Tom Morsanutto how he became interested in coffee, and the owner of Silvermine Coffee Roasters will answer without hesitation: “Bad coffee.”
“I was working in fin-tech up in Wilton, and the coffee was awful,” he said. “So I started looking around for something better.”
Morsanutto ended up buying a small coffee-bean roaster for his home, which led to a bigger one in his garage.
That’s where, technically, Morsanutto launched Silvermine Coffee Roasters in 2015. He opened his roasting and retail operation at 29 Harbor Ave., Norwalk, in September, he said, as a step toward being able to leave financial technology (he works remotely now, for a different company) to focus on coffee full time.
Now, he said, people can walk in, often from the nearby Waypointe apartments, to buy a cup of coffee or a bag of beans.
Those who do are greeted by a table in front of the door for self-serve coffee. A shiny roaster stands behind it, with a banner announcing the business’s name hanging on the back wall.
This isn’t a coffee shop with seating, nor does it look like a factory. In a front corner, off to the side, Morsanutto said is his remote office.
For Morsanutto, who grew up in Norwalk’s Silvermine area, it’s exciting to make these new connections in the community. He said that he’s grateful for positive Google reviews, which have also helped drive business.
In addition to individual customers, Morsanutto sells his beans to some local businesses
“Makin’ Waves, the food truck at the Rowayton train station, serves the Brazil,” he said. “Blue Cactus has the Colombian. UCBC buys my Brazil for its espresso.”
Morsanutto said that he’s also talking to Makin’ Waves about doing an event together and looking into a potential collaboration with ice cream maker Lindsay’s Handmade after pouring some of his coldbrew coffee over her vanilla ice cream.
As far as the coffee itself, Silvermine Coffee Roasters has eight different single-origin beans: Brazilian, Colombian, Sumatran, Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Ugandan and Ethiopian.
It also has decaf, and Morsanutto said he makes blends sometimes.
Morsanutto said he gets the raw green coffee beans from a company called Genuine Origin.
“They sell 65-pound boxes,” he said, while a lot of wholesalers only sell 130-pound bags of any one type of bean. “So when I was starting out, that was better for me.”
He stuck with the company, he said, because he’s happy with the beans and also with the relationships Genuine Origin has with coffee growers.
Morsanutto said it’s important to him to know that the people who farm and pick the coffee are paid fairly. Still, he said, it’s not perfect:
The Costa Rican beans come in with a lot of little twigs and detritus that he has to sort out. He said he’s working with Genuine Origin to find a similar bean that doesn’t have that issue.
Beans are roasted in a machine called a Loring Smart Roast. Morsanutto said that when he would taste coffee he really liked, it was usually roasted in one of these, so he knew that’s what he wanted for his own business.
“It’s almost like a convection oven, so the beans come out roasted really evenly,” he said.
Next up for Silvermine Coffee Roasters, Morsanutto said, is a potential label redesign and hopefully some local retailers.