Roasted for Espresso & Filter | Baking Spice, Toffee, Jammy Fruits

Baking spice, toffee, jammy fruits

Comprised of seasonally refreshed lots from our most trusted and established producer relationships. This elevated blend offers a complex and nuanced cup, delivering a sweet, jammy cup with integrated fruit tones.

Developing this blend has been driven through the desire to support our core producer groups through paying premium prices for larger volumes and more lots of coffee. The flavours are very complementary, and we have been honing our roasting approach to ensure the resulting cups are harmonious and balanced. We really hope you enjoy this coffee and are grateful for your support.

Current Composition:

50% Washed Bourbon from Manuel Patillo in Cusco, Peru.

50% Washed Kurume, Dega & Wolisho from Snap’s Raro Boda wet mill in Uraga, Guji Zone, Ethiopia.

Component Information:

We're updating our Legacy blend with this fresh arrival from Snap's Raro Boda washing station, in Ethiopia's Guji zone. Snap Coffee are our primary supplier from Ethiopia, with whom we've worked for the last 8 years.

The Farmers

Around 257 farmers deliver their coffee cherries to the Raro Boda washing station, located in Guji Zone’s Uraga woreda. Amidst natural forest and vegetation, they are working completely organically, tending to a range of cultivars, some of which are improved landrace selections such as Wolisho, Dega & Kurume. There are also pockets of JARC (Jimma Agricultural Research Center) identified and released varieties, dubbed 74110 and 74112 after having been initially catalogued in 1974, which are being promoted due to their resistance to coffee berry disease. Each farmer tends to around 2,000 coffee trees.

The Washing Station & Their Approach

Named after the kebele (small town), Raro Boda washing station has been recently refurbished and fitted out with a Penagos eco-pulper and white tiled fermentation tanks. These innovations and investments allow greater control over the processing of the fruit delivered by smallholders in the kebele. They process the coffee by depulping and fermenting under water for 48 hours before the parchment coffee is graded, initially in washing channels and then by hand during the time it spends drying in the sun on raised beds. To ensure uniform drying the layers are spread around 2cm deep and spend 10 days or so before they are consolidated, and samples are sent to the cupping lab.

Raro Boda wet mill’s QC manager, Medhin Tamiru, is an experienced cupper with over a decade of experience in the industry, and who is a judge for the Ethiopian Cup of Excellence competition. He will continue to oversee operations ensuring the coffee produced at Raro Boda is squeaky clean and of the highest quality.

The Exporter

Snap Coffee was established in 2008 by Negusse Debela Weldyes and the group are responsible for the running and operation of several coffee washing stations which feature in our coffee range each year. Snap oversee the processing facilities but also take on the task of dispensing agricultural knowledge to their contributing farmers. Steps such as tiling fermentation tanks to enable better cleaning, as well as implementing strict drying protocols, have gone long ways to improving the clarity, cleanliness and longevity of the coffees’ characteristics. They are committed to recycling waste by-products from coffee processing at each of their stations where they have also built schools and provided them with computing equipment from the other arm of their business which is in electronics. They have improved the roads to streamline access to the washing stations and have built health clinics to provide access to better healthcare for their contributing farmers as well. Lots from the most recent harvest have been dry milled at Snap’s own processing and warehousing facility. This has afforded the group even more control over the final exportable product that we get to work with, leading to improved consistency and uniformity.

Manuel Patilla Carrasco, Peru

We’re always impressed by the sweetness, structure and overall performance of the high-quality outturns from members of the Valle Inca Association in Cusco, Peru. Here we have a 32hr fermentation washed Bourbon from Manuel’s farm, Finca Limonniyoc in Yanatile Dristrict, to run as the Peruvian base component in our house concept blend, Legacy.

The Farm

Manuel inherited Finca Limonniyoc from his parents, and has renovated areas of Catimor with Bourbon to produce specialty calibre coffees in partnership with the Valle Inca Association. They have expanded their area of production, which reaches 1,800 metres above sea level, as well as improved and renovated the processing and drying infrastructures. Valle Inca are not just dispensing agronomical advice, but through their ecologically holistic approach to coffee cultivation and membership in the association Manuel’s farm is certified organic. Pacay trees are planted for shade and to encourage biodiversity. There are many secondary food crops including Rocoto peppers, chirimoyas, oranges, avocadoes and limes. The most common method for nourishing the coffee trees is to apply a homemade compost, composed primarily of spent coffee pulp and bird poo. Some of the farmers are working to ensure moisture is kept in the soil if they are in a more arid area, whereas those for whom there is excess humidity are pruning back the lower growth on their coffee trees to promote adequate ventilation.

Their Approach

Coffees are harvested by hand and floated to remove underripes before they are fed through a manually cranked depulper. Coffee cherry skins are removed during a sieving stage before the clean parchment is placed into GrainPro sacks before being sealed into plastic barrels fitted with a carboy style airlock. After a period of 32 hours has passed the native microbiome has broken down the mucilage surrounding the coffee’s parchment layer and is ready to be washed off. Valle Inca have funded the building of drying infastructures at many of their members’ farms, and these allow the lots to be dried in ventilated secadores on raised beds, which we are confident is adding to the stability, uniformity and reliability of their producers’ coffees. At Finca Limonniyoc the coffee takes around 18 days to get to stable and homoegnised moisture content.

The Association

In 2018, our first year buying coffee through Valle Inca, the group had around 100 members. Thanks to word of mouth, with producers telling their neighbours of the premium prices that they were able to receive having been able to access a more discerning coffee market through the association, the group now works with around 300 producers in the Cusco region and have recently expanded their operations to include Puno. All the members are working organically and are certified as such via the Valle Inca group. For a member to join, there needs to be a baseline of quality met, dictated in part by altitude and the type of varieties planted, but ultimately it is down to the desire of each member to improve their quality through hard work. The group provide agronomical advice and training as well as pre-financing, so the farmer members are supported in multiple ways. Several of their members reliably place well in Peru’s Cup of Excellence competition.