Facility Blend

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Espresso, Moka Pot, French Press

Best rested: Ideally at least 1-2 weeks before brewing as espresso

We profile and quality control this blend to produce a solid shot around 18g of coffee in for 38 - 40 g coffee out, in 30 seconds - easy peasy. Works great in a french press or Moka Pot too!

We’re tasting:
Creamy milk chocolate and almond butter as the dominant notes, with muscovado & dried fruits - apricot & golden raisin, alongside
gentle baking spice. 

In milk: Butterscotch & saffron bun  

Traceability (Blend Version: 15)

The Story:

Facility Blend was born out of our intention to create the espresso blend that we always wanted. A daily driver, consistently good, easy to use, suitable as much for a busy espresso-bar as it is for the humble french press at home. 

As much as we drive the concept of functionality and reliability through the Facility Blend, it also weaves in our key principle of facilitating connections. Coffee can play such a wonderful structural and connective part of our lives - the pick me up in the morning, the back-drop to a meeting or catch-up with friends, the interaction with your favourite barista (or the barista with their favourite regular). And for us, it allows us to connect with the farmers, exporters and importers who make it all possible. Through the Facility Blend we hope to weave all these concepts together into a delicious, easy drinking, dependable (but never boring!) house coffee, our flagship.

Often, the coffees selected for a blend represent the largest volume lots in terms of a farmer’s production, and the largest purchases in terms of a roastery’s coffee position. What we select for our blend components is perhaps one of the most meaningful choices a roastery can make, though it’s not often given as much fanfare as perhaps the latest and greatest microlot or experimental process release.

Version 15:

This latest version sees us get into a bit of a groove for what Facility "Is" - we're starting to see returning producers come back over many seasons, and each year with your support we're able to increase the volumes of coffee we purchase for these lots. As ever, a base of Brazilian coffee provides that classic "House Espresso" profile - fruit & nut bar, pastry sweetness & date syrup from the ever excellent Fazenda Recreio.

Featuring as both a Facility component as well as Interval, with seperate roast profiles - we've got the Caimo collective from Colombia, a regional + traceable impact blend from Nordic approach that returns higher value to producers for a tasty cup. Classic Colombia milk chocolate, hazelnut & apple vibes.

Finally, a real Facility classic at this point, our third season purchasing the blended output from the Izuba CWS - peak Burundian FW (fully washed) vibes with muscovado sugar, baking spice, cooked stonefruit, and what we love from Izuba is there's always a super weighty body to it.

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 (the only time a potato-defect is visible is during the very first stages of drying, especially the wet parchment stage). We recommend discarding any you find and giving your grinder a little extra purge - they should be very infrequent. 

We think most roasters either shy away from using these countries for blenders, and/or from talking about potato defect at all. Coffees from Rwanda, Burundi, and indeed all countries that border Lake Kivu can find it. The cause is not completely nailed down but the leading theory is it's spread via Antestia insect damage to immature cherries ripening on the trees. Proper agronomic techniques to manage Antestia as well as incredibly thorough hand sorting at the washing stations prior to milling have significantly reduced the incidence of this. It's a single bean that - only when ground - can smell a bit like fresh cut potatoes. We think coffees from Rwanda and Burundi are beautiful, delicious and expressive and crucially - it's an origin where the income from export grade speciality coffee is incredibly meaningful to the rural communities. Using these origins as blend components mean we can commit to purchasing large quantities of coffee, year on year, knowing that the return of value is significant.

Each lot is roasted separately with a unique profile to combine in the blend as a delicious, balanced & functional espresso, the house espresso we always wanted.