The Óige Expedition

 Inspired by old youth clubs that used to be in our hometown Ballymore Eustace, and other small rural villages, Club Óige is our lash at creating something interesting. A place that is pleasant and open, promoting art and creativity, and a spot to hang out for the new youth of Ballymore and co. 

While we explore our own passion through coffee, we implore artists around us in rural Ireland to share their passions too. We're developing our roastery into a place to do all of this. While embracing the fact that we may well fail, we feel its well worth giving a go.

I remember my "oh shit" moment with specialty coffee, where it all changed and something sparked a love and interest. I've heard lots of people have the same thing. Mine was when my cousin Shane opened up a bag of coffee and whipped out an Aeropress. I remember looking at him like he had two heads. He brewed a small shot of coffee and added a drop of steamed milk and served it up to me. My head was absolutely blown. It was just so smooth and sweet it was like nothing I'd have previously even associated with coffee. The next day I tipped into Naas and got myself an Aeropress and my first bag of specialty coffee. As I'm sure a lot of you can appreciate, I then went totally crazy for it.

After a few years, and a looooot more coffee,  I was beginning to take interest into roasting. I had spent about two years learning all I could about coffee.  I remember back in 2019 when I did my first roast. I went into Bad Habits in Naas (legends) and they sorted me out with about 500g of green coffee on the house. I went home, whipped out a pan and started to try roast green coffee on the oven. It was absolutely shocking bad as you can imagine, but this is how my roasting journey began. 

Soon after I bought a small 400g roaster and began to roast whatever green coffee I could get my hands on. My coffee knowledge was good but my roasting was very much on a trial and error basis (mostly error), but this is how I learned. I built a little brand called Gypsy in 2021, and sold coffee to friends and family and through VDA, the café I worked with at that time.

 I then more recently jumped ship abroad ( like the rest of us these days :L ) and have worked in a number of roasteries and apprenticed under some extremely talented people. I was so lucky to land these jobs, in some ridiculous award winning roasteries such as Pallet Coffee Roasters and Timbertrain in Vancouver. Exposure to coffee on this level somehow made my love and interest go to a whole new level again. I've spent the last two years studying roasting in far more depth, reading and watching all I can get my hands on, and discussing it all with my fellow coffee geeks, such as Quinn Fortin of Pallet and Kevin Smit the founder of General Strike Coffee Workshop. Getting to meet so many coffee professionals who share my passion and getting to learn so much from them has just been unbelievable.

Club Óige is the absolute dream for me. To be able to have no shackles and dive straight into specialty coffee, to explore the absolute best of what coffee can offer, and just get to share my passion for it with you.

Really hoping you will thoroughly enjoy what we can offer.

We are completely dedicated to bringing you the very best of what we can muster up in specialty coffee.

Thanks a million!

Niall