Coffee traced to the farm that grew it
We roast in batches under ten kilos and publish the farm, altitude, and harvest date on every bag. Nothing sits in a warehouse losing its aroma.
This week’s roasts
8 coffees · roasted to order
Bothy Blend
The filter blend we built for people who make coffee before they are properly awake. Sixty percent washed Colombia from the Nariño highlands for body and sweetness, forty percent washed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe for the floral top note. It is deliberately forgiving: a batch brewer, a cafetière and a V60 all get something reasonable out of it. Brown sugar and orange peel up front, a clean jasmine finish. We roast it lighter than the espresso and rest it three days. At 1 kg it works out to roughly forty cups, which for most households is a fortnight.
from $18.00
Cairngorm Espresso
Our house espresso, and the coffee we drink most. Seventy percent pulped-natural Brazil from the Mantiqueira de Minas gives it the weight and the cocoa; thirty percent washed Colombian Castillo from Huila lifts the finish so it does not sit flat under milk. We roast it a shade past first crack and rest it four days before it ships. Expect dark chocolate, toasted hazelnut and a soft red-apple acidity. It pulls forgivingly between 18 and 20 grams and holds its shape in a flat white, which is the point of a house espresso. If you brew filter as well, ask for the whole bean and grind coarser — it makes an honest, if unexciting, cup.
from $19.00
Wush Wush Natural
A small natural lot of the Wush Wush varietal from the Bench Maji zone in south-west Ethiopia, dried whole on raised beds for twenty-one days with cherry turned by hand every two hours through the first week. That much attention is why there are only nine bags of it, and why it costs what it costs. It drinks like tinned peaches, bergamot and a strawberry-jam sweetness, with a tea-like body that some people find too delicate and others buy four bags of. Brew it gently — 58 g/L, 92 °C, coarser than you think — and drink it before it has cooled all the way. Once these nine bags are gone we will not have it again this year.
from $28.00
Finca El Puente
Marysabel Caballero and Moisés Herrera farm above Marcala in La Paz, and El Puente is the lot we have bought from them every year since 2022. Parainema is a stubborn, low-yielding varietal that most producers will not plant; grown at 1,600 metres and fermented in tank for eighteen hours before a slow shaded dry, it gives a cup that tastes closer to a good Central American than its yield deserves. Red apple, panela sugar and a dried-apricot finish, with enough structure to survive milk if that is how you drink it. We roast this one to sit comfortably in both a filter and a longer espresso — one of the few coffees on the shelf where we mean that.
from $22.00
Kamwangi AA
Kamwangi is a factory of the New Ngariama Farmers Co-operative Society in Kirinyaga, taking cherry from roughly nine hundred smallholders on the red volcanic soil below Mount Kenya. Cherry is depulped the day it is picked, fermented overnight, washed through the channels and dried on raised beds for around fourteen days. This is the reason people become annoying about Kenyan coffee: blackcurrant and grapefruit, a dense syrupy body, and an acidity that is sharp without being thin. Brew it as filter, 60 g/L, water just off the boil. It is not an espresso coffee and we would rather you did not force it.
from $24.00
Cerro Azul Geisha
Twelve kilos of washed Geisha from Cerro Azul, Camilo Merizalde's farm on the ridge above El Cairo in Valle del Cauca, picked at 1,900 metres and fermented in sealed tank for thirty-six hours before a fourteen-day dry in a parabolic dryer. Jasmine, white peach and Earl Grey, with a silky body and a finish that stays on the palate for an uncomfortably long time. We sell it in 100 g bags because a kilo of it would be an indulgence we cannot in good conscience recommend, and because 100 g is about eight brews — enough to learn the coffee, not enough to get bored of it. Filter only. Two bags per customer while stocks last.
from $46.00
The Cairn Set
Three 100 g bags: Cairngorm Espresso, Kamwangi AA and Finca El Puente, packed together with a single-sheet card giving the producer, altitude, process and a brew recipe for each. It is the cheapest way to work out which shelf of ours you actually belong on. Roasted to order on Tuesdays and Fridays and shipped the same day. Choose one grind for all three bags, or take whole bean and grind to suit — we would take whole bean.
from $32.00
Nightwatch Decaf
Decaf that is not an apology. Washed Caturra and Colombia varietals from smallholders around Pitalito in Huila, decaffeinated at the Descafecol plant in Manizales using ethyl acetate derived from Colombian sugarcane — a gentler process than solvent or water methods and one that leaves considerably more of the coffee behind. Milk chocolate, dried cherry and a molasses sweetness; enough body for espresso and enough clarity for filter. We roast it slightly darker than the caffeinated lots because decaffeinated beans take colour faster and turn ashy if you do not respect that. 99.9 % caffeine-free.
from $20.00