The story of the Stray Bean began on a beautiful summer morning in July 2017 when our first customers – a family of four from New Zealand – walked through the door just after opening. It was a long process to get there: finding the premises, convincing local residents that a “coffee shop” wasn’t meant to sell drugs and that we weren't even going to stay open late at night, getting building permits from the Versailles town hall (one of the strictest in all of France), and finally carrying out the work to transform what had been a hosiery shop for 38 years.
Since then, we have strived to serve the best coffee possible to tens of thousands of customers, whether they are local residents or visitors from all over the world. We have been through difficult times: 35 days of SNCF strikes; the Yellow Vests; Covid…
Throughout this time, we have had wonderful teams – over 30 people in total, almost all multilingual – who have worked with commitment and done everything possible to ensure every customer was happy they came. Almost without interruption: we can count on the fingers of one hand the number of hours we haven't been open during our advertised hours. "Exceptional closures" are not our thing.
Even so, some time ago, we decided we wanted to do more. We wanted to dive deeper into the world of specialty coffee. And that meant one thing: roasting our own coffee!
Roasting "specialty coffees"
Roasting opens up a whole new dimension to the world of coffee. It is the roaster who chooses the green coffees, which means they must understand everything that differentiates one coffee from another: the continent, country, and region of origin, the bean variety, the farm's altitude, the processes used to extract the bean from inside the cherry and prepare it for roasting, and so on. It is a journey of discovery that takes us to new countries, brings us new friendships, and leads to new taste sensations.
Anyone can roast coffee. Succeeding at "specialty coffee" (the jargon for high-quality, exceptional coffee) is something else. You must first know how to select a very good coffee and then roast it in a way that brings out its full aromatic potential. It is both a science and an art. Today, we track all roasting parameters in real time on our computers. We measure bean size, density, moisture content, and color. We record the temperature, energy, and airflow settings that make up the roast profile. All of this is very technical, but it has only one goal: to optimize the taste in the cup and, once achieved, to know how to reproduce it every time.
The taste in the cup is what matters. Body, intensity, and balance. Aromas, whether fruity, floral, chocolatey, or otherwise. The absence of defects, such as a bitter aftertaste. This is the culmination of everything that came before, from the cultivation of the coffee trees to the roasting, and finally the preparation by an attentive barista. Magical.
That is why our coffees are unique. Roasted in the Paris area and served in our coffee shop in Versailles, each one has its own story, part of which is ours as well.
And at the end of this story, the destination of this journey is you; after all, the only thing that really matters is that you have a good time when you enjoy our coffee. We hope that is the case – let us know!
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