Join us as we source and roast some of the most beautiful, transparent, complex coffees we can find.
Each month, we source 3 exciting coffees to feature in our subscriptions boxes. Already in? Scroll down for this month's producers, tailored home brew recipes, and the month's featured video.
this month's featured
PRODUCERS
For long time subtext coffee drinkers especially (but also, of course, in general) we have some very fun comparisons coming from returning producers, returning regions, and returning narratives representing so many of the exciting movements in specialty coffee.
For the third year in a row, we have coffee from Frank Torres in Nariño, Colombia. Frank has become increasingly popular of the last year in Canada, in part due to his amazing work not only on his farm, but as an agricultural consultant and buyer in his region working with Apex, one ,of the few Canadian specialty coffee importers (not to mention some heavy accolades from Scott Rao, which probably doesn't hurt). We have two special coffees from Frank on our menu: one washed sidra and the variety in this month's subscription, a washed maracaturra. A cross between Maragogipe and Caturra, this large-bean variety is quite rare and distint in flavour.
Following Mohammed Aba Nura's coffee, we figured it would be a fun for you to compare another single producer coffee, not only also from Jimma, from the same grower's group: Tokuma. Coming from a different Kebele and, despite the name, not having any relation to Mohammed, Nesru grows JARC 74110 with an incredibly clean expression through her natural processing. Another fun fact for long-time subtext coffee drinkers, Nesru is married to Mensur Aba Nura—one of the first single producer seperations we brought in from Jimma as a roastery.
Lastly, we are so thrilled to bring you a day lot from what has become our favourite region for washed Ethiopian coffees: Bensa, Sidama. While we were saddened that Hamasho's coffee (our favourite of last year) didn't turn out this harvest, Keramo, which is relatively close by, came the closest at delivering all that pretty white flower and white peach. This coffee is day lot seperation processed at the Keramo washing station but produced by smallholder farmers in Bura.
*Hover over the image to see each coffee's specifications or head to the product page for even more info*
this month's
BREW RECIPES
We think it's also important to taste our coffee the way it will be brewed at home. For that reason, we test each subscription coffee on a home brew setup*. Recipes are built with a Hario v60, an Aeropress, and a Ratio drip brewer. Below are the recipes we've found as a result: simply click through to see different brew recipe cards for each coffee. We now include two espresso recipes as well — check out the card below.
*All grinders end up being calibrated slightly differently so that even the same grinder model, unit to unit, will have discrepencies. We've put the grind we found on the EK43, the number alone won't be very useful but you can use the relative grind size so that if you are able to dial in one of the coffees, the others will be a breeze. Higher numbers are coarser, lower numbers are finer.
Some brewing notes this month: since we're full swing into Ethiopian coffee season, you may notice you have to go quite a bit coarser on those coffees! What does that mean? On an encore or hand grinder, that may mean 2-4 clicks or more! Don't hesitate to go coarser until all of that complexity and delicacy starts to show. If your brews taste dull/ lack flavour, you've gone too coarse.
this month's
VIDEO
Coming soon