Colourful

Sourcing coffees that are exceptionally vibrant, bright and intensely expressive, then blending them together for a raucous cacophony of flavour. This blend will be an exploration of modern processing and vibrancy, a year round staple of intense fruit-forward notes. Coffee in full Colour, not just black and white.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter and Espresso

Light Roaster Influence: We roast this blend on the lighter side, with the view that it should still work as an all-rounder for both filter and espresso.

Best Rested: 2-3+ Weeks

Filter: 60g/L, 93°C

Espresso: 18g/45-50g/20-25s

We're tasting: Aromatics of red & purple fruits - we're finding blackcurrant, grape, strawberry alongside dates and dried figs. In the cup it's super rich and dense, with a chocolate fudge cake sweetness, boozy cherry kirsch and vanilla chantilly as the dominant notes - much like a black forest cake. As it cools we're finding lime boiled sweets, spiced plum jam, and mulled apple cider.

Traceability (Blend Version: 19)

The Story

Colourful was born out of another concept we wanted to play with, something we felt almost criminally under-explored. There is such huge potential in combining deeply fruity and fun coffees into a blend, yet so often it’s almost seen as sacrilege, that they must be a single origin special release, or else some green coffee buyer secret police will break in and confiscate the sacks back.

Yet who amongst us has not occasionally chucked the remnants of a special bag or two into the grinder, and found the result to be more than the sum of its parts? So in the full rebellious spirit of resisting pretentious coffee traditions, we've sought out the most uniquely fruity and fun coffees to feature in Colourful . There's no denying that the funky, wild profile of an anaerobic or experimentally processed coffee might not be for everyone, or the sort of coffee you drink every single day. However, we believe in their ability to surprise and delight, with the objective to showcase the vibrancy and full dynamic range that coffee has to offer. Like a mug full of pick n’ mix sweets, coffee in full colour (not just black and white!).

So here we have it - Colourful. It's a year-round celebration of colour and flavour, giving us the freedom to source, blend, or even to spotlight single origins under its banner. Colourful isn't dictated by its components; instead, its essence is its flavour profile and the fun we have in creating and selecting for it.

Version 19:

Originally planned for V18 but arriving a fortnight too late; we selected a fun field blend CM Nat from our pals The Good Sourcing. Produced at Bridazul by combining the output from 2 farmers and 3 farms (Eudoro has 2), this coffee was super funky, boozy tropical and full of bassy loud notes and syrupy body. A mite more chocolate/redfruit forward on landing, we had a few ways we could have approached pairing with this coffee. Our traditional blending approach might have been a bright, high acid or top note heavy washed coffee, oft with low body - a best of both worlds approach.

But we thought - why not double down. This traditional natural Caturra from Hacienda Sonora, an ecologically minded estate in Costa Rica (with 45 HA of shaded production with high biodiversity out of a total of 100, with a 35 HA wild forest reserve) was the most traditional of naturals - we found heaps of cherry pie, grape and milk chocolate in a slightly pulp-y forward cup. Doubling up the funky natties, when we worked on test blending it was a bit like when two waves combine to make a larger wave - constructive interference - where they're very complimentary of each other and the end profile is Loud, Fun, Natty AF and emphatically "Colourful" - perhaps a little lower acid than some versions have been, but then Colourful has never been about perfect consistency in flavour as much as it is consistency in concept. Each lot roasted separately and post roast blended.