Anam Coffee Celebrating 1st Anniversary

We set about creating a rural business that represented everything about the Burren in the best possible way and developing our brand so that it really spoke about a sense of place. So our name, Anam, meaning soul or spirit very much represents this. Our location is unique and it’s so much part of our identity; the place where we live and the place where we roast – Brian O’Briain

As you drive along the winding myriad of country by-roads and lanes on the way to Anam Coffee, snaking through the patchwork quilt of limestone and rugged spread of the Burren, one cannot help being struck by a number of thoughts. First and foremost by the natural allure of your surroundings but also indeed by the wonderment of why somebody would, of all things, set up a coffee roaster right here in the heart of this karst landscape? This you immediately know is folly as soon as you speak to Brian O’Briain because you can’t help but be drawn in by the unwavering enthusiasm and passion that he exudes for coffee and his roastery. Originally from the county but after many years living and working abroad in the airline industry he, and his husband Alan, returned to the west of Ireland in 2012 and to the remote beauty of north Co. Clare. “I moved home and realised the pride & passion farmers here in Ireland have for their land, their animals and their way of life. It’s an enduring tradition against the odds and it is something that has hugely inspired my own journey to starting the coffee roaster”. Coffee beans are not obviously a raw material that is indigenous to the harsh yet magnificent scarcity of the Burren and so I am compelled to ask the obvious but important question, why coffee? “I have always loved coffee”, Brian in his straightforward eloquence explains before offering more of his story…

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