December - Dog and Gun Coffee Co.

 

Tell us about yourself!?

The simple pleasures make a world of difference when your body is exhausted, you stink to high heaven and you’ve been battling the elements for days.

To give you an idea of who we are, imagine this scenario:

You’re hiking in to a remote camp in the high country. You’ve got to carry everything you need to be completely self sufficient for 7 days. That’s all your sleeping kit, food, safety equipment, clothing, water, hunting gear and/or photography equipment.

You jam all of that into a pack and you start walking.

You’re charging up and down mountains, crossing rivers and pushing through thick undergrowth. Your feet are blistered, your knees ache and your lungs burn with every step.

But you finally get to camp - enthusiastic and exhausted - you set up your tent and sort your gear. You start to wonder why you didn’t cut your toothbrush in half or whether a second pair of undies was really worth the weight on the hike in. Maybe you contemplate throwing some things into the fire so you don’t need to haul it back out. 

There’s one thing that you can always justify carrying with you though — coffee!

Waking up the next day, building a pre-dawn fire and having a quality brew while the world comes alive is one of those simple pleasures. It’s an experience that forces you to slow down, to appreciate the process and savour the little luxuries.

And so that’s what we’re about and how Dog & Gun Coffee started — simply wanting to provide a better coffee while chasing adventure in the wilderness.

 

How long have you been roasting and how did it start?

We’re fairly new to the roasting scene but are fortunate to be surrounded by some of the best people in the business to learn from and bounce ideas around. Dan from Open Coffee has been an amazing mentor and the community he is building is extremely welcoming and supportive.

We’d decided early on in launching Dog & Gun Coffee that doing our own roasting would be inevitable. Curiosity is at our core and roasting allows us the opportunity to explore the nuances of coffee on our own terms. 

 

What is your roasting process? 

We’re fairly contrarian to the wider roasting community which seems to (currently) favour more and more exotic beans, lighter roast profiles and complex attributes in the cup.

Our philosophy is to keep it simple - a smaller range of consistently great coffees that are approachable and really forgiving in terms of how they’re brewed.

Smooth and balanced is the aim; regardless of whether someone is using one of our “Pre-Loaded” single serve drip filters in the bush or whipping up an espresso at home.

 

What makes you unique?

Again, it’s probably the simplicity of our product — coffee that is versatile and suitable for a customer that wants a quality brew without getting too deep into the details. We want to introduce people to the experience of specialty coffee who would normally reach for the convenient supermarket options. 

As part of our overall mission, we also give 1% of all sales to conservation projects across Australia and New Zealand — because we want to see our wild places thrive for the next generation to experience.

What challenges do you think the industry are facing that coffee drinkers ought to know more about?

One of the major issues is around the economics of the overall supply chain. A lot of hands are involved in getting a cup of coffee to the consumer— it’s reasonable to assume that not everyone is making a sustainable living or able to incorporate best practice.

As coffee consumption increases globally, there’s not really a lot of room for prices to go down, so people will likely need to shift their thinking around paying for a quality cup of coffee — treating it as an experience rather than just a commodity product. 

If our subscribers loved your coffee, what's the best way for them to get more?

Head over to our website www.dogandguncoffee.com to order. We’re excited to be launching a new “wildcard” roast that changes each month to keep things interesting (this months Coffee Scout subscribers actually got early access to our January roast).

 

To get your paws on more of their amazing coffee, visit their Instagram @dogandguncoffee or check out their website.