Our Journeys subscription customers we hope go through a 12 month green coffee buying journey with us hence the name of the subscription.
As a rule, we as a company focus on the buying of single origin specialty grade coffee. We tend to focus on coffees that display high complexity of fruity or floral flavor characteristics and as a result roast them lighter to allow these expressive flavors to shine. Darker roasting is akin to using sauce in cooking and in our opinion masks flavor complexity. There is a role for the darker roasting of coffees in the industry but we do not feel it has a role to play when a coffee has incredible flavor complexity.
So with that said the majority of the coffees we showcase in our Journeys subscriptions will be highly complex flavor experiences. However there will be some months where we showcase coffees that we purchase for other reasons other than expressive flavor. These coffees are purchased for a cause or to support farmers that we work in direct trading relations.
In the case of the community lot Cumarbco. That coffee was purchased by us from world class producers Cafe La Granja Esperanza. We have been buying directly from this Colombian producer now for 5 years and support them by buying not just the outrageously good coffees that they produce on their own five farms but also the community lots that they are active in processing.
A community lot is a lot collected by a producer from fellow farmers in the area. In an attempt to increase the overall quality of the region's coffee, La Granja ask that other local farmers in the area supply them with only their best and ripest cherries that they will then pay well above the Coffee Federation per lb cost for. La Granja then process the cherries at their own processing facilities at their farms and then bag and export into their mature supply chains . It's a scenario where everyone's a winner. Local farmers are taught that for a quality selection of the ropest cherries they will receive a premium price and La Granja gets to expose these farmers' work into mature supply chains across the world.
Typically these community lots are Colombian Varietals which are lovely medium body/medium acidity coffees, however they do not have a wide range of flavor complexity and therefore are better suited to a more developed (darker flavor profile). On this roasting profile these coffees pair wonderfully with milk, that is not to say that they are still awesome black for those that want a more traditional coffee drinking experience.
Thank you for taking the journey with us and exploring what the specialty coffee world has to offer right across the spectrum.