When Germiko Hill and Andrew Brooks announced they were starting Harbour Roast, a speciality coffee import business, the response was excitement mixed with relief.

“One person said they had given up on finding decent coffee in Bermuda, so they packed away their gear,” Mr Hill said. “As soon as they saw our site they pulled out all their coffee equipment again and placed an order.”

Mr Hill is a pastor and Mr Brooks has a background in insurance, but they share a passion for a good cup of “Joe”.

Harbour Roast imports a range of exotic coffee brands such as Intelligensia, Sey and Onyx.

Some of the products come with a card explaining exactly where and by whom the beans were grown.

Importing coffee for their own consumption was expensive and most of the local offerings too stale for their liking.

“Grocery stores bring it in through shippers, and so there are a lot of links in the chain involved with that,” Mr Brooks said. “By the time the coffee gets on the shelf here, it has been a long time since it was roasted.”

It isn’t just a local problem. Mr Hill said the coffee sold by big coffee shop chains overseas tends to be dark and bitter.

“If you roast darker, people won’t be able to taste how stale it is,” he said. “The tendency to over roast could also be because the coffee is blended, and so just tastes like generic coffee.”

Mr Brooks likes his coffee black, so he can taste it in its purest form. He admitted to being a little bit of a snob when it came to his Java.

Mr Hill likes his coffee with a little milk.

“It makes it a little smoother for me,” he said.

He has a small coffee bean roaster at home.

“Roasting is a very delicate art and a science,” Mr Hill said. “You can burn a bean in a fraction of a second if you are not paying close attention. You have to track sounds and smells carefully during the roast.”

Because roasting coffee beans is so tricky they do not feel skilled enough to roast the coffee beans they sell.

So far, their Sey coffees from Peru are proving to be popular.

“People often say a coffee like this tastes more like a tea,” Mr Brooks said. “It is very delicate and light. It is not the traditional, punch in the face, caffeinated, dark, chocolatey tea.”

He said coffee characteristics can vary greatly even in one country depending on the region and altitude, but many Peruvian coffees are more floral and citrusy with notes of persimmon, orange blossom and lilac.

Peru’s coffee industry has been hit hard by climate change, with increased heat and dryness reducing yields in some areas. However, there have been some unexpected positives. The warming temperatures are making it possible to grow coffee at higher altitudes.

“There are a lot of speciality roasters that we are partnering with who are starting to look at Peru,” Mr Brooks said. “Colombia was the more prevalent region before, and now people are looking for alternatives. I would say Peru and Panama are the ‘in’ coffee regions.”

The business partners said the main challenges to setting up Harbour Roast were bureaucratic.

“Bermuda does not really lend itself well to e‑commerce,” Mr Brooks said.

He pointed to fees, regulatory hurdles and a long, complicated set-up process for tax, banking and online payments that made launching Harbour Roast much slower than they expected.

• For more information, seeharbourroast.com