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.

Version 14 is a banger - 25% Rwanda FW, 25% Peru AW, 50% Brazil Nat. Medium to Heavy Roaster influence - solid milk espresso choice but great across all purposes.

Roasted to produce a solid “house espresso”, with distinct chocolate and darker fruit notes, an all-rounder suitable for milk, alt-milk and black coffees. Coffees seasonally sourced to ensure consistent core flavours year round.

A continuation of Osito's first regional blend from the Cerrado Minero region. Real classic Brazil blender vibes - milk choc fruit & nut bar.
Joining the fray - honestly, Chacra is spoiling us all silly on this lot - an anoxic washed Caturra, fresh crop, outrageously good, from a 2420 MASL farm (!!) we had the volume to commit to take the lot in one which made it affordable for Facility. One of the very first Peruvian coffees we bought was a regional blender built by Simon, and while this is heaps better it's nice to bring our sourcing relationship full circle.

Maintaining its spot in the blend - but swapping to the FW version, with a more developed larger batch profile to the house filter iteration - fresh crop Gito from Raw Material/Muraho trading company. This project takes the output from all the Muraho stations during the milling process, taking small-screen size beans and separating them out into a regional lot. These beans previously would have not been sorted to an export grade level and sold internally - despite being just as good as the larger screen size lots! They are mostly peaberries and when export sorted (density/colour) incredibly good quality.

We're returning to a run of Burundi and Rwanda again for the winter to spring season. There is no two ways about it - by engaging with meaningful purchase volumes from these countries, you will hit the odd potato. Running a higher ratio of Brazil will reduce it, and all the partners we purchase from have excellent sorting that reduce the incidence further. We recommend discarding any you find and giving a little extra purge, they should be very infrequent; using a tupperware to hold the discard grounds instead of an open knock box can be a useful trick.

We're tasting: Super sweet - we're getting milk chocolate, stewed apples and plums, with a syrupy body with a long toffee & baking spice finish
In milk: Apple pie & golden syrup

V16: Peru Gesha - Bioreactor + Anoxic Washed:
Ripe cherries pulped and placed in a bioreactor, and inoculated from a mosto made from previous batches (both washed & natural) for a 72 hr fermentation in an anoxic environment. Parchment then washed and dried in a parabolic drier over 15 days.Traditional Washed + Kenya Batian, Ruiru 11 - Koji Inoculated Anoxic Natural: Ripe cherries are delivered to the washing station and are sorted and floated on arrival, before moving to fermentation barrels. The cherries are inoculated with Koji (A. oryzae) and fermented in an anoxic environment for 96 hrs, with continual agitation of the barrels. Cherries then drained and dried on raised beds.

Light Roaster Influence - great for filter/espresso. Excellent batch or guest espresso option.

Sourcing coffees that are exceptionally vibrant, bright and intensely expressive, then blending them together for a raucous cacophony of flavour. This blend will be an exploration of modern processing and vibrancy, a year round staple of intense fruit-forward notes. Coffee in full Colour, not just black and white.

We're tasting: Aromatics of foam sweets, strawberry laces and lemon/ginger tea. In the cup it's super sweet and bright, with milk chocolate as well as blackberry & redcurrant jam as the dominant notes. There's a spicy/savoury note that reminds us of gingersnap biscuits and preserved lemon. As it cools becoming more like dried strawberries, with earl grey and chinotto soda.