HOW DO WE
CHOOSE COFFEE
APPROACH
WHY WE TRAVEL
AND CHOOSE
COFFEE
PERSONALLY?
Every year during the harvest season, we select fresh coffees from different countries from hundreds of samples. This can be done remotely through importers, but we prefer to select coffee ourselves.
Because finding and choosing great coffee is one of the most important skills of a good coffee roaster. Direct purchases have many advantages:
WE SELECT
UNIQUE
LINE UP
WE SELECT UNIQUE
LINE UP
There is rarely interesting coffee on stock. Therefore, direct purchases allow us to choose from all the lots that farmers and exporters have. This is how we create a unique assortment of coffee and stand out in the market, because usually only we have such coffees.
WE OPTIMIZE
PRICES
WE OPTIMIZE PRICES
When purchasing from a stock, the price includes the importer’s margin, long-term storage, and the risk that the coffee will not be sold. We fill up the containers ourselves, discuss conditions with exporters, and thus make coffee more affordable.
WE BUILD
RELATIONSHIPS
WE BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
The trips to coffee origins help us build close relationships with exporters and farmers. This makes it easier to manage quality, fermentation profile and reserve coffee in advance.
COFFEE ORIGINS
WE BRING COFFEE
FROM 10 COUNTRIES
Coffee is a seasonal product. In almost all countries where coffee is grown, there is only one harvest per year.
ORIGIN
WHEN
COFFEE IS CHOSEN
The work doesn’t end after the harvest, the whole chain takes another 4–6 months before coffee is in our line up. This is what the entire chain of work with our partner farmers looks like:
WE DO
PRE-ORDER
4–5 months before the trip, when the coffee cherries are just beginning to appear on the trees, we send a pre-order to our partners for the upcoming season — how much coffee we want to buy, what flavour and quality. And which experimental processes need to be done for us.
CUPPINGS
After picking and processing the coffee, we pack our bags and fly to have cuppings at origins. On such trips we try to visit several exporters and several farms — to collect all the information about the current situation. Usually we cup several hundred samples per trip prepared at our prior request, and take samples of several dozen of them home with us in a suitcase.
ROASTING
AT HOME
In our laboratory in Izhevsk, we roast coffee again on a sample roaster and from several dozen samples we select 10–15 lots that we will buy for the season.
MAKE
FINAL ORDER
MAKE FINAL ORDER
We make an order, send it to the exporter and discuss prices and conditions.
PREPARATION
FOR EXPORT
Coffee is prepared for export within 2-3 months (during this time, coffee goes through several stages: stabilization, cleaning, sorting, packaging in bags, loading into a container and sending to the port).
DELIVERY
Delivery of a container by sea takes on average another 1,5–2 months.
QUALITY
CHECKING
After receiving coffee, we take samples of all lots and evaluate them again, comparing them with what we have chosen.
RELEASE
We set up a plan for releasing coffees, write a story about each coffee, describe and give scores.
