New Arrivals

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, 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.

Anoxic Washed, Red Bourbon, Light Roast - Best brewed with Filter (excellent batch brew or pourover option). Would bang as a turbo-spro with rest

The Shyira washing station produces what we consider to be some of the best coffees coming out of Rwanda - extremely high altitude farms and precise processing combine to produce superlative results. 
Returning for its third season, we've got the two anoxic lots from Shyira. This year in a reversal of fortune, we're preferring the anoxic washed lot - we're finding really bright, clean acids and an incredible sweetness.

We’re tasting:
Aromas of grapefruit curd, panela and white florals. In the cup it's got a zippy bright acidity with heaps of structure - we're finding ripe whitecurrant, floral heather honey, hibiscus milk tea, golden raisin and stewed plums. As it cools we get a gentle note of darjeeling tea alongside a brioche sweetness, like vanilla pain suisse.

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

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

Natural / E.A Decaf, Variedad Colombia, Castillo Naranjal, Medium-Heavy Roaster Influence - Profiled mainly with balanced and soluble espresso in mind, but versatile

Returning to the very same decaf lot we first launched with Scenery, the Villamariá natural lot has some history. We're reliably told it might have been the starting gun on the trend of excellent decafs - as both one of the first naturals as well as one of the first 87+ lots to have been sent through the Descafescol plant in Manziales, all the way back in 2019. 

Operating a hub-and-spoke model, cherry for 30-50 smallholder families in close communities deliver cherry to Finca La Aurora, where it is consolidated and taken 500m downhill to the Jamaica drying station, where warmer conditions better suit the drying of naturals

Raw Material is a Community Interest Company that returns 100% of profits to producers. Having started in a time of record low coffee prices, they delivered high prices to producers; we're in record high coffee prices now and they deliver high prices to producers - and when the market inevitably contracts, they'll keep delivering high prices to producers, achieved through their cherry-purchasing model with two-stage payments that decouples farmer earnings from commodity volatility.

We’re tasting:
Aromas of sour cherry, malt syrup and chocolate brownie. In the cup we get poached pear, medjool dates and milk chocolate, with that classic pineapple acidity common to the Colombian E.A decaf process. Overall super rich and sweet with a long toffee finish
In milk: chocolate tiffin.