Workhorse Coffee Beans

Tasting notes: Nutty, chocolate body with sweet caramel, orange and citrus notes

Workhorse Coffee Beans is built around the concept of consistency and reliability. The blend and roast style make this coffee suitable for all brew methods including espresso. 

These coffee beans feature our Rwanda relationship coffees produced by farmers in Rwanda that we've visited. This gives us consistency over the course of the year enabling us to provide a reliable and dependable taste profile. From time to time the ingredients will change but we aim to substitute similar coffees when changing this blend.

Our Workhorse blend is a light roast espresso and perfect if you like a bright, juicy but well-balanced espresso. If you are looking for a traditional Italian style espresso take a look at our Nova Blend. 

Rwanda Liza Washing station, 50% (relationship coffee)

Liza washing station is owned by Jean Paul (far left in the above picture). He is a second generation coffee farmer who has worked for many years as an agronomy consultant both in Rwanda and the Congo. His farm has about 6000 trees and he processes coffee from his own farm and from several hundred local small hold farmers within the community. The quality he produces is outstanding and this is due to his dedication and commitment to training local farmers and focusing on very careful hand sorting at the washing station. Jean Paul produces a variety of different microlots specifically for us, these include washed coffees and bespoke experimental process coffees. 

Brazil Inhame 60%
Varietal: Catuai
Process: Natural
Altitude: 1000+ masl

Brazil Inhame is a small family farm with 28 hectares of coffee trees located near to the town of Campos Altos. We were introduced to the farm by Bruno Souza, owner of Academia do Cafe, a Q Grader, coffee farmer, and one of the most experienced coffee professionals in Brazil. 

The farm is owned by Marco Aurelio and is managed in partnership with his son Bruno (an agronomist). They have a strong environmental focus concentrating on the preservation of local water sources and indigenous fauna and floral.

Harvesting of Brazilian coffee is typically done using a combination of mechanical and manual picking. They use a selective mechanical approach that does a great job of picking cherry that is ripe and leaving unripe cherry on the trees. After harvesting the coffee is dried on concrete patios until reaching 30% moisture content. The coffee is then moved to mechanical driers that gently reduce the moisture content down to 12%. This method helps to free up drying space on the concrete patios as it can be challenging to find enough drying room during the peak harvest time.

Ideal for: Espresso. Works very well in milk-based drinks. If you like a medium roast filter coffee or cafetiere with lots of body and tend to use milk, then this will work well too.  You might notice that the components that make up this blend are very similar to our Nova blend. The key difference between the two is the roast profile. The Workhorse is roasted to highlight sweetness retaining some good acidity and fruit notes. The Nova roast is longer and resulting in a darker coffee with lower acidity and more chocolate notes.