Coffee

Traditional Natural, Red Bourbon, Lightest Roaster Influence -Best for Filter/Pourover/Turbo Espresso
3 key notes: [Berry Compôte, Dried Fruit, Masala Chai]

Our fourth harvest featuring coffee from the smallholders of Gikungere hill, every year a stunner. Long miles do great work.
We're SO stoked to bring this coffee back - one of our very first single origins ever was a natural process from the smallholders of Giku Hill, and every year we've been requesting to bring it back. Every year we've been thwarted by low availabilities and pre-existing contracts but finally - finally we managed to snag a small allocation.

The eagle eyes among you might recognise the label - we'll admit it was previously used for the Giku anoxic natural, which is to date one of the funkiest coffees we've ever released as a single origin.
We're unlikely to feature that process again, infinitely preferring the more traditional, aerobic fermentation profile from Giku - so we've decided to reclaim the label design for Giku natural. The label is split from a wider diptych design of a continuous landscape!

We’re tasting:
Big stewed fruit aromatics reminding us of berry compôte, cola & lime, and mulling spices. In the cup it's strawberry fruit leather, dried apricots and dates, milk chocolate coated raisins and honey. As it cools, the mulling spices aromatics combine with that classic Burundian black tea note to remind us of milky masala chai.

V15: Rwanda - Traditional Washed + Natural / Costa Rica - Slow Dried Natural Starmaya
Light Roaster Influence - great for filter/espresso. Excellent batch or guest espresso option.

Fun lil washed + nat Rwanda combo with our final CR lot of that season - slow dried so still tasting great, we decided to move it over to Colourful to act as the purple fruit base.

We're tasting: Jammy stewed fruit, raisin and lime zest aromatics. In the cup it’s super red-fruit forward with apple, plum, raspberry and cherry as prominent front notes, with root beer & crème caramel on the back. As it cools it develops an interesting fruity spiced note like pink peppercorns, with hints of dried peel and golden raisin

Traditional Washed, Ají, Lightest Roaster Influence -Best for Filter/Pourover/Turbo Espresso
3 key notes: [Raspberry, Rhubarb, Honeycomb]

Our second time featuring La Soledad after last year's excellent trad washed Ombligon/Caturrón lot. This Aji cupped blind like a Kenyan coffee for us, a bit of an amuse-bouche for the upcoming season of East African coffees.

Mario Fernando Gómez operates La Soledad, a farm that the Gomez family has owned since the 1960s and which achieved recognition as a Cup of Excellence finalist in 2009. Spanning 22 hectares and showcasing contemporary Colombian agronomy, Mario maintains an extensive collection of varieties including Yellow and Red Geisha, Sidra, Pink Bourbon, Orange Bourbon, Yellow Etiope, Aji, Striped Bourbon, Caturrón, and Chiroso.

Mario has branched out into producing a lot of the modern high intervention style of coffees - a bit of a microcosm of the wider Colombian industry, with the shift from commercial production, to rare variety planting, to now offering a diverse set of processes. We've sourced this one through Nordic, who naturally gravitate towards the lower intervention techniques. 

We’re tasting: 
Rich red-fruit aromatics - we're finding plum, raspberry, cherry & grapefruit zest. In the cup it's dense & syrupy, reminding us of Kenyan coffee - rhubarb, redcurrant and ripe persimmon while warm, with a honeycomb sweetness and sparkling acidity. As it cools we get a sweet ruby grapefruit note with brown sugar, black tea & hibiscus.

Anoxic Natural, Red Bourbon, Lightest Roaster Influence - Best brewed with Filter (excellent batch brew or pourover option). Would bang as a turbo-spro with rest

This year's Shyira anoxic natural is presenting a slightly different fermentation character in the cup compared to the last two crops we've purchased. Having passed our feedback to Muraho via Raw Material, we've found that for this season's lot, there was likely some extra "on-bed" fermentation due to rain during early drying requiring the cherries to be covered for longer during initial drying. 

We're finding it heavier, denser, more dark purple fruits and heavy characteristics compared to the usual brighter + lighter profile we expect from Shyira for the anoxic natural. We've applied our funk-minimising approach to this coffee to expose maximum aromatics and acidity (leaving this with a truly light roast) but there's no two ways about it, this coffee tastes of a heavy hand with the post-harvest approach. 
Lovers of funk, rejoice

We're tasting:
Big process-driven aromatics - we're finding banana rum, overripe pineapple and pear drops. In the cup it's heavy dark stewed fruits - plum, blueberry, apple and rhubarb, with a muscovado sugar sweetness. As it cools the acidity evolves towards tamarind and freeze dried blueberry, with gentle baking spice and ruby port, medjool dates and milk chocolate. 

Traditional Washed, Castillo, Light Roaster Influence - Brilliant batch or espresso option, crowd pleaser

Another CDNT producer, this lot was all comfort flavours and very sweet - a classic example of Castillo processed well. This lot was separated out from the regional blend due to its quality, and we're releasing it as a nice easy going washed lot full of comfort flavours - and as such we're taking the roast a touch further to support the cup.

We’re tasting: 
Aromas of milk chocolate, dried apple and fig jam. In the cup it's got a syrupy texture with the aromatics carrying through to the cup, joined with ripe plum, toffee apples and cranberry, alongside toasted pistachio & macademia nut. We're finding a little of the traditional Castillo cup character but presenting as fig leaf - hints of coconut, vanilla and a fresh herbality.

Traditional Washed, Red Bourbon (SC 13/14), Light-Medium Roaster Influence - House Filter Omni, great on batch or a more trad guest espresso

"When you do buying work in the field at origin, cup all the grades" - some wise words once given to us by one of our old green coffee mentors, many years ago. They started the bones of the Gito project: In Rwanda, coffees are density sorted multiple times at the washing station, then again at the dry mill before being screen sized (sorting beans by size). Due to the legal mandates to improve the reputation of Rwandan coffee as well as the perception for quality, only the larger screen size lots would be exported, with the smaller screen sizes being sold on the internal market for a fraction of the price.

The rub - and what you find when you cup all the grades - is that these SC 13/14 beans are excellent - just as good as the rest of the station output. At about 50% peaberry content you could almost market it as that alone. By taking the undersized output of the MTC stations, seperated during dry milling and thenb preparing them to an export level of colour sorting - the Gito (meaning small) project delivers a significantly higher return of value to the producers, and it's very tasty. We're on our third season of buying Gito now and it always continues to deliver.

Having bought for Facility, last season we flagged that it absolutely could hold its own as a house filter or single origin release; whilst we have the Natural lot in Facility V13, we're making a start on the Washed as our next house filter - after a run of natty numbers on house batch, it's good to return to something more clean.

We're tasting:
Aromas of marmalade, dark fruits and toffee. In the cup it's buttery bodied and very sweet, with distinct notes of plum crumble, stewed apple and milk chocolate. As it cools the sugary notes evolve to fruity muscovado.