Why We Only Roast Single-Origin Coffee
Every batch we roast is one lot from one place. We don’t blend. That’s a constraint we chose, and it has consequences in both directions.
One coffee at a time
A single-origin cup is legible. The Uganda Mbale Mountain tastes the way it does because of where it grew and how it was processed, and you can follow the line from one to the other.
Blending obscures that line by design. A good blend is built to hit a consistent target across seasons, which is a reasonable thing to want and a different thing from what we’re doing. Once lots are mixed, the individual character is no longer something you can taste your way back to.
Traceability
Roasting one lot at a time forces specificity at every step:
- Origin: we can tell you where the coffee grew
- Processing: we know how it was processed
- Roasting: the profile is built for that coffee rather than for an average
- Traceability: you can look up the farm, the region, and the lot
When you know the Ethiopian Wenago was naturally processed at 1,800 meters, the way it tastes stops being arbitrary.
Coffee is seasonal
Coffee is an agricultural product with harvest seasons and annual variation. Our offerings change through the year because the coffee does, driven by harvest schedules in each origin, new crop arriving, and what holds up when we cup it.
What it costs
Single-origin roasting is harder than blending in specific ways:
- Each origin needs its own profile work
- Lot-to-lot variation shows up in the cup instead of being averaged out
- Inventory is more complicated, and a coffee runs out when it runs out
- Customers have to be told what changed and why
What we get back is clarity in the cup and the ability to say exactly what’s in the bag. That trade has been worth making so far.
What this means in practice
Sometimes we have fewer options on the menu. Sometimes a coffee you liked is gone and won’t come back, because the next harvest is a different coffee. That is the cost of the approach, not a failure of it.
Curious about a particular origin? Ask us about any origin .