Colourful

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: A mélange of classic Ethiopian aromatics - mixed berries, bergamot, jasmine and plum blossom. In the cup it's super sweet and bright, we find sticky blueberry jam, tinned peaches in syrup, bergamot rind, honeysuckle, as well as a funky tropical hoppy note that reminds us of a hazy zero-alcohol IPA. As it cools becoming a little more richly floral - we find parma violets, turkish delight and

Traceability (Blend Version: 20)

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 anoxic 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 20:

We might as well get the thorny bit out of the way. In the three and a bit years we've been running as a roastery, we've put the price of Colourful up a sum total of once. In that time, we've seen the base rate of commercial coffee prices (which - while not at 1:1 parity, do have a strong influence on the prices for speciality) effectively double and maintain at this higher rate. Colourful has always been a passion project for us - it is not a blend that is driven by pure economic sense, nor should it ever be - the goal has always been to deliver the most fun, interesting and accessible consistent concept, even if that means buying silly, silly coffees for it (bioreactor anoxic mosto washed Geshas, koji inoculated Kenyans, etc etc) and eating a big hit to the margins to do so.

With that - and the longer times the blend version stays on the offer relative to our other single origins - we are able to purchase larger volumes of coffee from our supply chains. And we often do think of a coffee on the cupping table as "could be a single origin, could be colourful" - often it comes down to pure FIFO (first in, first out stock rotation) as to what way those lots go. It's a place where we get to test new ideas, new partnerships, and buy coffees that might not exist again. We've been looking at the price of coffee go up - and while we've not in any way reduced the calibre of the coffees we buy, and while accepting that colourful is a passion-project - we've made the tough choice that it does need to have a price rise in order to be sustainable as a project.

The alternative is to watch the green coffee purchasing power get slowly eroded away, forcing us to either not buy the incredibly fun coffees this blend can access, or forcing us to try and negotiate much lower prices for lots of excellent quality. As we follow the trilemma of green buying - cheap, high quality, ethical (you can only pick 2) - we would rather try and offer better prices to the producers we work with, rather than asking them to accept less.

We hope you understand this was not easy, and we believe the value offered is still great - some incredible coffees come through this blend, effectively offered at a steep discount compared to their single origin value purely because that accessibility is inextricably baked into the concept.

To both demonstrate what we mean by this - and to celebrate reaching this milestone version, we've absolutely pulled out the stops for V20 We've been huge fans of Ture Waji's work in Ethiopia for many years - as we bought past-crop coffee in our nascent few months (and were BLOWN away at how well it held up at the time), this marks 4 seasons now of buying from Ture's Sookoo coffee. There is something truly magical that comes from blending washed & natural Ethiopian coffees together and we're slightly boggled that other roasters don't do it more often. We ran washed + natural coffee from the Dambi Uddo station & the smallholders of the Bookkisa kebele as Colourful V10, and it seems only fitting that we brought back a year later for Colourful V20. But we do like to try and out-do ourselves - when we heard whispers that this year there might be the first ever Bookkisa special preps, we immediately asked if we could commit to some to do this exact blend concept. But alas and alack, this year it was not to be - but we'd already gotten the idea in our head, and so we swapped our volume to the Shoondhisa "winey" lot.

Ture has produced two flagship anoxic naturals each year from the cherry that the Shoondhisa smallholders deliver to the Suke station that make it onto the Osito offer list - as they call it, the "anaerobic natural" and the "anaerobic natural (winey)". We feature the "anaerobic natural" as "Ture Waji's Anoxic Natural" - as all fermentation is metabolically anaerobic, but not all fermentation environments are anoxic ;) Typically the difference between the two - beyond the cup profile - is that the winey lot has an extended fermentation time. We triple checked with Ture but it seems like this year the times are flipped, with the winey lot fermented for a shorter period of time- but we can absolutely attest, it's a lot funkier than the other lot. Perfect Colourful fodder

Here's what we found in the cup & why we think they're so great together - 45% Washed Bookkisa - Heaps florals, bright citrus acidity, plush stonefruit, but a tea-like body. 45% Natural Bookkisa - Classic Guji profile - blueberry, strawberry, dense purple florals lavender and lilac, slightly thicker but still delicate body, Already the two combined already round each other out and become more than the sum of its parts - enter the final stage 10% Shoondhisa "Winey" - big boozy tropical fruit, syrupy sweet and thick bodied

This is the Guji profile sliced 3 ways and absolutely turbo-charged - banger as a filter or on 'spro, we've been voraciously tucking into the test roasts as part of our roastery QC and couldn't be more excited to release this latest version & celebrate our 4 seasons working with Ture.

Each lot roasted separately and post roast blended.