Scenery 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

Traditional Washed, Red Bourbon, Lightest Roaster Influence -Best for Filter/Pourover/Turbo Espresso

Our fourth harvest featuring coffee from the smallholders of Gikungere hill, every year a stunner. Long miles do great work

We’re tasting: Super bright citrus zest, chamomile and date aromatics. In the cup we're getting sweet meyer lemon, white grape, dried apricots, buttery shortbread sweetness and vanilla chantilly cream; with a complex tea note that reminds us of light oolong.

Traditional Washed, Caturra, Lightest Roaster Influence - Best for Filter/Pourover/Turbo Espresso
Extremely high altitude farm
3 key notes: [Clementine, Muscat Grape, Panela]

We have a philosophy for roasting. That there's the platonic ideal form of a coffee's flavour expression (for each individual preference) - and that roasting can only ever reveal an imperfect version of that. That we as roasters can only ever make a coffee worse, never better than that perfect ideal - and so our goal is to minimise that gap, striving for our best version of it. 

We'd like to draw a comparison of this lot to another favourite of ours - Huehuetenango in Guatemala, where similar cool temperatures at altitude allow extended cool temp ferments. Sometimes, when travelling in Guat at the end of harvest, or receiving very very fresh offers right off the bed- you will try coffees that are open too fast. That won't travel & land well - but have such incredible, beautiful flavours, sweetness and acidity, they're truly special. 

This coffee is so reminiscent of that, but stable, and here - landed - reminding us of those coffees. This coffee is the platonic ideal of a washed Caturra
Grown under shade at a stunning 2400 MASL in Jaén, this is a peak coffee for us - delicious and with minimal intervention needed, absolutely sessionable, we could (and are) guzzle this by the mug.

We’re tasting: 
Sweet buttery aromatics reminding us of freshly baked apple crumble. In the cup it's beautifully sweet + plush - with clementine juice aromatics and acidity, white muscat grape, a buttery pastry note that reminds of vanilla danish pastries, with gentle hints of stonefruit. As it cools the sweetness reminds us of panela (raw sugar), and there's a long stewed apple note in the finish.

Traditional Washed, Field Blend, Light-Medium (House-Omni) Roaster Influence - Best on batch or single O spro.

Returning this year as a house filter, this impact project combines lots that would be too small to export as a single producer microlot blended with bulk production from a group of producers in San Antonio Huista, Huehuetenango. This project returns export speciality grade pricing to producers who might have otherwise missed out on this - and with it comes classic comfort flavours, ideal at multiple roast degrees, and a welcome counterpoint to some of the wilder lots on our offer.

We're tasting:
Sweet caramel, milk chocolate and dried apple aromatics. In the cup it's clean, sweet and buttery bodied- we find orchard fruits (pear & apple), almond butter and hazelnut crème, with a dense fudge sweetness. As it cools some black tea, dried peel & apple streusel cake notes come to the front. A nice comfort coffee easy-drinker. 

Yeast inoculated Natural, Red Bourbon, Light-Medium Roaster Influence - Best brewed with espresso - funky guest option or more chunky batch.

Our FOURTH harvest purchasing yeast lots from the Kibingo washing station. We've been having a bit of run of Scenery all-stars - Kibingo Intenso Natty was in the very first version of Colourful, and was our second single origin espresso. Brilliant to bring it back.
This year's is possibly the best version we've tried yet - some previous years presented very heavy funk character, this year there's a lot more complexity and clarity to the structure, a great example of Lalcafé yeast fermentation. 

We're tasting:

Super fun aromatics - raspberry kombucha, green banana & cacao nib. In the cup it's bright, juicy & tropical - we're getting passionfruit, fruit pastilles, pineapple, Riesling wine, with some of that classic Burundi baking spice. As it cools, we get orange glucose sweets, watermelon gummies & milk chocolate.

In milk - passionfruit, pineapple, & banana foam sweets.

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