Coffee

Washed, Catuaí, Heavy Roaster Influence - Best brewed as a Trad Espresso. Old school

We roast on the lighter end of the spectrum and we've never hidden that, but we've always planned to complete the core range. Lightest, Light, Medium and now, finally, Heavy. This espresso is profiled entirely with traditional 9-bar 1:2 in mind, and a percentage of all sales will be donated to the Jerwood Space, a not-for-profit that subsidises rehearsal space for emerging theatre producers, writers, directors, choreographers and companies. By purchasing this espresso, you are directly helping the next generation of theatre practitioners access affordable, dedicated space to create their work.

We think a lot about the trilemma of green buying: out of cheap, ethical and high quality, you can only pick two. Here we're choosing affordable and ethical, sourcing from farms completing excellent ecological work, alongside buying the lower grade bulk production from producers already in our network. It's always frustrated us that speciality roasters will champion social good then only sweep in for the top microlot, leaving bulk production to the side. We've been guilty of this ourselves at times, and this espresso is our chance to make amends and become better partners with the producers with whom we work.

By shifting our focus from intrinsic cup quality (the hunt for sparkly acidity and intense aromatics) towards extrinsic value, the attributes that exist around the coffee rather than in it: who grew it, how the land is managed, and whether we're buying in a way that actually supports bulk production, we gain the space to lean into the flavours we add through a heavier roasting influence - roasting as a transformational value add.
This will not be some cheap, bitter & smoky afterthought - we intend to source and roast this with the same care and attention as everything else on the range, just pointed in a different direction.

We intend this to broadly be a single origin coffee, but future versions may also be blended.

V2: We selected this coffee to run as both a Facility component and Interval, as we get a handle on the volumes we need to buy and get the upstream pipeline rolling properly. Caimo Collective is a project in Bruselas, Pitalito, Huila, ran by Nordic approach and built around delivering higher income to producers with whom their coffee would otherwise disappear into generic blends.
By aggregating these lots into a traceable communal offering, the project gives growers access to speciality pricing and market access they could not reach alone, with payment split into two stages: an initial payment on meeting the programme's quality threshold, and a reliquidation once the lot is sold, tying producer earnings to the final commercial outcome.
Alongside price, the project extends into post-harvest education, financial literacy, and access to financing, with the longer aim of building loyalty among returning producers and steadily bringing more growers into a system that rewards the quality they are already capable of.

We're tasting: Bonfire toffee & toasted nut aromatics. In the cup it's like high quality dark chocolate, with predominant cocoa flavours but hints of dark red fruits (dried cherry especially), overall bittersweet with a thick body.
In milk - Dark chocolate & toffee.