| |
The Raven's Brew Story
Long ago, far away, in a seascape of countless islands shrouded in mist and robed in dense forests, Raven’s Brew Coffee came into being. This place was the legendary Alexander Archipelago, also known as Southeast Alaska. The exact locale was the small and isolated town of Ketchikan, the rainiest inhabited place in North America. If there was anything to match the quantity of rain there, it was the number of trees, fish, ravens and the unfathomable, unquenchable craving of the local human denizens for rich and strong, hot, steaming, soul-warming coffee. Nothing excited their senses more than a proper cup of coffee and that coffee was Raven’s Brew. Its perfect balance engendered social harmony. Its freshness and purity matched the intense beauty of the natural setting. Its heat was the satisfying antidote to rain-drenched conditions, and it accentuated perfectly the sunny days.
 No wonder that it was Raven who brought the gift of the ultimate elixir. It had been Raven who, in eons past, brought the gift of the sun to light the sky of the first peoples of that land. Now he brought the brew that lit the soul, and it was so welcomed that it soon spread all over Alaska and throughout the continent and even across the seas.
And there you have it, slightly mythologized and zoomorphed, but essentially the story of the Real Alaskan Coffee For Real Alaskans And Their Real Alaskan Friends. It is a story that continues to be driven by a fanatical love of coffee, coffee lore, coffee quality, and rare coffees. We are a company that strives to offer only coffees that will be an enlightening experience for the customer, and fair and just for the small producers of our unique coffees.
Raven’s Brew is now roasted not only in Alaska, but also stateside in Tumwater Washington, to better serve that vast market from a roastery that is identical to the original.
While RBC is primarily a wholesale coffee roaster to discerning coffee retailers, we maintain a website dedicated to retailing directly to coffee lovers who do not have enlightened coffee retailers in their neighborhood. Thank you for visiting us and please encourage your local merchants to serve Raven's Brew!
Learn about early Raven's Brew History»
Early History
 A view from Ketchikan Raven's Brew Coffee began with single-minded enthusiasm for the world's best coffee, to a town deeply in need of a fresh hot cup: Ketchikan, Alaska (average annual rainfall 152 inches – more recently noted for "The Bridge to Nowhere"). The founder, Michael Beech, wanted the presentation of the coffee to be as much like the experience of the coffee as possible and teamed up with local artist extraordinaire, Ray Troll, to design a logo. Ray, in the grip of inspired madness, created a Raven rising, like a phoenix, from a steaming cup of coffee.
Armed with a black and white logo printed on stickers, a few hundred pounds of green coffee and an 8 pound (maximum load) electric fluid-bed roaster purchased from coffee roasting visionary Michael Sivetz, Raven's Brew began roasting coffee in a friend's garage in September of 1992. The coffee was sold to a few discriminating local retailers.
In December of that fateful year, at the height of the coffee season, an article about Raven's Brew was published in the Ketchikan Daily News. This helped boost the sale of coffee but also brought the new operation to the attention of a local DEC official (Department of Environmental Conservation which operates as the health department in Alaska). The official paid a visit to the "roastery" and promptly issued orders to shut the operation down.
Unfortunately, the reasons for shutting down the business, while having little to do with actual health risks, had everything to do with the need for (unavailable) city services, thus precipitating a move out of the garage and into town with the additional burden of paying rent.
We were producing magic beans out of our original location in the garage: The perfume was heavenly, the profile clean and complex with great depth of flavor.
Our new (officially-sanctioned) location was an old converted bunkhouse formerly used by the fish packing industry on the outskirts of downtown Ketchikan. We were shocked to find that the coffee that was produced at this new location, while not bad, was not Raven's Brew Coffee. It lacked the depth and complexity that we loved. The proper electrical current was simply ruining the coffee.
A crude and flamboyant contraption (no less than twice bursting into flames), affectionately referred to as the Death Trap, was created to reduce the current going to the electric roaster. Eventually, through trial and error, we were able to replicate the same awesome coffee that was produced from our first location.
The Death Trap was soon replaced by a more respectable custom-made transformer. Business grew. More space was needed and we moved to our third and current location in Ketchikan. We continued our quest to provide the most thoroughly-awesome-coffee-in-the-universe to the denizens of planet Earth (a quest which continues to this day), eventually opening a roastery in Tumwater, WA.
About the Art
| From his tree-top studio, high above the Tongass Narrows in Ketchikan, Alaska, Ray Troll draws and paints fish filled images that migrate into museums and onto t-shirts sold 'round the globe. A “dead”-icated Raven’s Brew addict, Ray downs a full pot each day to help create his intricate compositions. Ray created our Raven's Brew, Deadman's Reach®, Bruin Blend®, Dharma Beans®, Three Peckered Billy Goat®, Resurrection Blend®, Skookum Blend® and Wicked Wolf® logos as well as much of the clipart. Find out more about what Ray's up to through our links page. |
| Better known for his realistic paintings of wildlife than his occasionally ribald sense of humor, Alaskan wildlife/aviation/marine/renaissance/multimedia artist, Terry Pyles created the Kopi Luwak design specially for Raven’s Brew Coffee. He's also a big fan of our coffees. See and purchase Terry's amazing works of art from our links page. |
| Karen Lybrand, Alaskan ex-pat currently living in Maine, created the unique image for our Alaska Moka Bar and together with Ray Troll created our Santa Caws™ label art. She is also the font-trix for most of the lettering in our labels, as well as having created the Deadman's Reach map and compass rose. |
Intrepid Board Members
|
 |
