Brewing guides.
Origin stories.
The cupping notebook.
Written by the roastery team. No SEO chum, no AI-generated explainers. Field notes from origin, brewing tutorials we actually follow at home, and the occasional hard sustainability report. Updated when there’s something to say — not on a content calendar.
The journal
Capucas cooperative — five years on, here’s what changed
We started buying from the Capucas cooperative in Marcala, Honduras in 2019 — 78 farmers, 240 hectares between them, mostly washed Catuaí. We’ve been back four times. The infrastructure is different. The farmers’ income is different. Here’s the longitudinal report.
How to brew a single Chemex pour like the roastery does
Grind, water temperature, ratio, pour pattern. Twenty minutes of practice and you’ll match what we’re doing at the cupping ta…
What we look for in a single-origin lot — the cupping rubric
The 8-point sensory grid we run every lot through before deciding whether it lands in the catalog. Not all coffee that scores 84 makes th…
Espresso at home: dialing in Mercer Street
Grind size, dose, yield, temperature. The 14-day exercise that gets you from frustrated to repeatable on a domestic espresso machine.
Sustainability report 2025: where the money went
Direct-trade premiums paid, carbon offsets purchased, packaging waste avoided. Audited figures + the things we wish were different.
Why we stopped using nitrogen-flushed bags
Nitrogen-flushed bags extend shelf life by 8-12 weeks but use 3.4× the plastic. We made the case for compostable bags + faster delivery i…
AeroPress brewing — three recipes from the lab
Standard, inverted, and the ‘coffee with bread’ recipe we run at the cupping table for breakfast. Ratios, times, grind sizes.
La Esperanza estate, Huila — 18 hours with Camilo
We spent two days at La Esperanza, the 22-hectare farm above Pitalito. Field notes from the picking season + the call we had to make abou…
Why fresh matters: a 12-week shelf-life experiment
We measured aroma compounds in the same blend at week 1, week 4, week 8, and week 12. The drop-off is steeper than even we expected.
The roastery dog is also our quality manager (sort of)
Buster is a 7-year-old beagle who has the run of the roastery. He has opinions about which roasts are landing right. We have data.
Saturdays 10am-2pm. Free tour. Coffee on the house.
The Asheville roastery + tasting room is open every Saturday for free public tours. Watch the Probat in action, see the green-coffee storage, and cup whatever’s on the table that morning. The roasters are around — they’ll talk about whatever you’re curious about.
No reservation required for general tours. If you’d like a private 60-minute cupping session (up to 6 people, 5-coffee flight, $30/head), book through the link below.
The annual report. Audited figures, including what we wish were different.
Every January we publish a public sustainability report. Direct-trade premiums paid (in dollars, by farm). Carbon offset purchases (Pachama-verified). Packaging waste avoided vs. the typical specialty-roaster baseline. Water + energy use at the roastery, year-over-year.
What’s in the 2025 report: $184,000 in direct-trade premiums above C-market. 412 metric tons of CO₂e offset. Compostable packaging across 100% of bags shipped. Plus a frank section on what’s still bad — shipping carbon scales with subscriber growth, and we haven’t figured that one out yet.
New journal pieces, monthly
A summary of new posts, what’s on the cupping table, and the next single-origin lot. 1-2 emails a month. No SEO chum.