The foundation of our company lies in our commitment to sourcing and roasting the highest quality coffees that we can find, while building meaningful relationships with the farmers and our importing partners.

Sourcing

We leave the green coffee sourcing to a handful of trusted importers who specialize in this and only this. We always strive to buy coffees with as much traceability as possible. The vast majority of our coffees come from a single farm, from a single producer (whose name or farm name goes on our bag), or a small group of producers. The quality of the coffees that we buy results in the producer being paid far more than the average coffee farmer gets paid, and usually far more than any coffee that is certified as Fair Trade. We receive endless samples from our importers and roast them on our Ikawa Pro Sample Roaster, then cup them blindly to evaluate quality.

Roasting

We roast on a Loring fluid bed roaster, not a traditional drum roaster. It gives us much better consistency than the 50+ year old technology that drum roasters rely on, so there are no surprises about how hot the coffee gets or how much air is flowing. This means that you can expect each batch of a given coffee to taste exactly the same as any other batch.

Our goal is to roast coffee so that it tastes balanced. In the roasting world, balance means that there is sweetness, acidity, bitterness (we try to minimize this, but coffee is inherently quite bitter), and body. We recognize that each person has their own preferences–some like more bitterness, others favor more sweetness, and so on. Therefore, we try to maximize sweetness and acidity as these characteristics are what taste best to us, as well as distinguish one coffee from another. The end result depends on the green coffee itself. 

Let’s look at a high quality washed Ethiopia Guji as an example. It might have bright grapefruit acidity, with meyer lemon sweetness, and flavor notes of blueberry and jasmine. However, a high quality washed Colombia Narino might have soft clementine acidity, with brown sugar sweetness, and a flavor note of herbal tea. Neither should taste sour or bitter, but their balance is slightly different because the origin and processing affects the flavor compounds that we have to work with. 

Our meticulous selection of coffees, information that we get about a coffee's responsiveness to heating from an array of 50g sample roasts, and our years of experience roasting and brewing coffee all come together so we can provide you with an excellent cup of coffee you’ll savor.