Scenery Coffee

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.

Traditional Washed, Fragencia, Light Roast - Best for Filter/Pourover/Turbo Espresso

Another LaREB banger and one we're particularly excited for - this lot absolutely stunned us on a blind, coded sample and was an instant buy, and the more we've learned the more we're intrigued. The agronomist at LaREB is one of the original suppliers of Sidra & Mejorado seeds from the Nestle Ecuador breeding plot, but he brought a third variety to Colombia, which Herbert is also growing at at his 575 farm - "Fragencia" - which only a few select producers have had access to, Luis Camacho included. 

We’re tasting: 
Orange blossom, pomegranate and lychee aromatics. In the cup it’s juicy and unctuous - we’re getting lime curd, ripe lychee (almost rambutan) and honeydew melon, alongside ripe summer berries and white sugar. Super complex - as it cools we get peach, oolong, orange & lime boiled sweets, and a hint of fresh basil leaf.

The Story:
Fragancia is likely a hybrid of Sidra [Ethiopian landrace] x Catimor [Disease resistant Timor Hybrid x Caturra cross]. It's definitely got some of that Sidra cup profile - the basil hint in the finish is a real tell, but none of the Allium taste you can often find in Sidras. 

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.

V1: We were hanging out with Micah from Skylark in Ethiopia, where Micah helps as part of the Bette Buna team. We got talking about the sourcing impetus for the Interval espresso project, and who better to have leads than one of the co-founders of a non-profit roastery that requires every supply chain above 10 bags to come from a vetted social or environmental project. We share a lot of the same thinking on how buying power should work in speciality coffee, and we'll look to join forces on some future projects where we can leverage our volumes for good.

Micah's first thought was Roble Negro, a farm in Costa Rica's Tarrazú region where conservation of rainforest and freshwater sources comes before coffee production, which reminded us that we'd met Daniela Vasquéz in London several years back, which was a brilliant bit of serendipity. We've purchased a small allocation of the previous crop from Skylark's position to kick us off with V1, and we're in discussions about the current harvest. This coffee is such a perfect fit for the brief: previous crop, so better suited to a heavier roast, with a cup profile that's all milk chocolate, toasted nuts and an unctuous body, which we've emphasised by stretching both the roast and the development time out far further than we would for a typical Facility component, without going to extreme end temps.

We're tasting:
Big melted chocolate aromatics alongside toasted hazelnuts and smoked almonds. In the cup it's thick and unctuous, with a weighty body, with flavours of toffee, dark chocolate, caramelised hazelnuts; with some hints of dates and dried peel offering complexity. 

In milk: Classic milk chocolate & nutty notes, punchy.

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

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.

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.

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.