Our Story
Because telling a story is an impactful way to get closer to a brand …….
A one-year Journey starting with a bus ride back in January 2021 to the state of Karnataka.
This is how it all unfolded: Our founder, Chirag, a home brewer & roaster since a decade now was always a passion driven enthusiast. A proud founder of an AD Agency and a successful entrepreneur who believes in the get up on go motto. During the recent pandemic when things came to a standstill, he took that as an opportunity to work on “Grey Soul Coffee Roasters”. He began formulating all his years of knowledge and skills pertaining to specialty coffee and started contemplating. He soon laid out a plan divided into 3 primary goals.
- Figure out the Brand to build and cement its vision.
- Reach the grassroot levels and understand the ground reality.
- Get certified, trained, and take all the learnings back to work on the D-Day.
To achieve these goals and to make this brand a reality, he embarked on this oblivious yet passionate journey and this is how it all shaped up.
The Forethought.
27th JAN 2021, is when things were put into motion. But the planning began in December of 2020.
During this time the mission statement of the brand and its vision was cemented. From the get-go the focus was Experimental Roasting, Curating Blends, Independent Q Grading & discovery of unique flavour profiles. But at the same time, the brands identity, communication, technology, packaging and how it will be perceived by all was also being worked on simultaneously.
The Journey.
Feb - April 2021
Grey Soul™ Specialty Coffee Roasters began its journey at farms from Karnataka, Coorg, Kerala and Nagaland. What we noticed was a plethora of varietals, several processing approaches, different cultures, avid producers, but what bound them together was the love for Indian Specialty Coffee.
Post spending days on farms talking to producers, estate managers, the coffee pickers we became totally aware of the intricate nature of this agricultural product. In due course, we cupped hundreds of coffees and brewed them repeatedly to perceive and be mesmerized with varied flavour profiles. Eventually after finishing practical and theoretical training and understanding the supply chain systems, we want on the source our chosen green bean LOTS for the first year.
Another highlight of this journey was, Biodiversity, and how it is at risk, which we understood further after meeting the people who have spent a lifetime on farms adjacent to remote forests.
This led us to create "1 % for diversity", an initiative by us.
The Launch.
May 2021.
The Roastery was built from ground-up to cater to all our needs of storage, quality control, roasting unit, brewing set-up along with packaging and dispatch unit. The website, the packaging, the roast profiles and the team was all set and everything was building up to this day. The D-Day was finally here, and we went LIVE on social, closed circle and through our online store on 14th May 2021. A felling that was unmatched and continues to still remain the same.
Today, we source our coffees as a part of DIRECT TRADE, meeting the people behind the scenes and involving ourselves at every stage of the process to learn and unlearn, perform experimental roasts and produce high scoring lots to pass on all the information back to the brewers to maintain traceability and transparency. Having delivered thousands of Bags of Coffee along with Brewing Equipment and much more, we continue to pursue our passion to work with independent producers, focus on boundless & experimental roasting and unite all over specialty coffee.
But this was not the end and certainly not a part of the complete vision the brand has envisioned. So, then came the Noshery. Fast forward to a year Later. We opened doors to our very first and pune's only specialty coffee roastery and brew bar at Koregoan Park, Lane 6 Pune. In a city where commercial coffee is made accessible by stalls atop pavements throughout the city and where awareness is inadequate, we started fighting for Taste. We always wanted to communicate, meet our patrons, and bring the experience of specialty coffee to you all in person. One of the biggest reasons behind starting our Noshery!
The Noshery:
Over here, we roast, we cup, we brew and serve specialty coffee to all.
But along with the same, we also serve specialty tea, specialty chocolate beverages and bakes.
When it comes to bakes, we have taken it a notch further. Tea cakes, to biscotti's, to pastries, tarts and savouries like our bestselling Korean cream cheese bun is what we are serving !
The Indoors: A comfortable and cosy seating with neither too loud nor too soft music and ambience that is designed for people from all walks of life. With highchair seating facing the outdoors, bar facing seating and tall tables for a quick cup of coffee, the indoors provides an incredible experience.
The Brew Bar: A dedicated space for brewing specialty coffee. A place where manual brewing, pulling of espresso shots & texturing of milk all happens at once. The focus here lies within the ideal extraction to achieve peak flavours of a particular roast profile.
The Outdoors: A seating area that compliments the weather of Pune and takes full advantage of the same. A space where patrons tap their feet to the tunes while they enjoy delicious food & specialty coffee.
In-house Roastery: Green bean storage, sample roasting, cupping & profiling all happening inside the noshery at our Roastery. Our Team of certified & experienced roasters focus on experimental roasting to develop complex yet incredible flavour profiles. We also sample roast all new LOTS until they reach our production roaster and finally available to brew. The focus here lies within, unveiling of new LOTS ready to brew.
Today we are a Team of Roasters & independent Q Graders from Pune City who move forward in a loop to roast, cup, brew and unite.
Grey Soul™ Specialty Coffee Roasters Focus lies within:
- Coffee Processing & being involved right from the harvest to ideating radical techniques.
- Creating Roast Profile, that brings out the optimum flavours.
- Flavour Profile Creation, that is unique and dominant in every brewed cup.
- Blend Creation, a unique offering by Roasters to create flavours beyond single origin coffees.
- Brew Approaches, experimenting with brewers to curate & develop guidelines for flavourful brewed cups.
- Preserving Biodiversity, through our initiative to give back financially & emotionally.
- Unity, bringing people together over coffee.
This is our journey so far at grey soul coffee roasters, where believe that the world cannot be defined In BLACK AND WHITE because there is so much more hiding among the grey. And so is the world of specialty coffee, full of endless possibilities. We at grey soul coffee roasters take a vow to commit to specialty coffee, staying true to it and adding value to the entire supply chain as roasters!
We swear by it and stick to the same to perform the same in perpetuity.
So the question is, do you talk grey?