This blend was originally created to be used in our café – Café Lounge, hence it got the name – as espresso and espresso-based drinks. We were looking for green coffee with very low acidity, a coffee which can be roasted light and still have big body, a coffee with a character which would be the perfect base for cappuccinos and lattes. We managed to find the coffees and this blend has become our most popular coffee. It even won a 2 star in Great Taste award in 2016.

This blend is based a special aged coffee: Indian Monsoon Malabar with a small amount of the semi-washed Indonesian coffee. The ageing process is reproducing the conditions of the long sea voyages before the time of modern shipping. This process is changing the character of the coffee – its acidity is basically zero, its body is deepened with tobacco, almond taste notes. In order to lift up the taste of the monsooned coffee a similar heavy-bodied coffee with low acidity is added, the Indonesian coffee.

Coffees: Indian Monsoon Malabar and Indonesia Toraja
Growing Altitude: 1,000-1,600 m.a.s.l.
Preparation: Monsooned – Indian, semi-washed – Indonesian

Cup: very smooth, heavy-bodied coffee with low acidity, mellow taste, featuring tobacco, almond notes

Tip: makes a really good, well-balanced espresso, popular with both novice and seasoned coffee lovers. This blend is the perfect partner for milk, all its characters are cutting through the heaviness of milk. Must try as a cappuccino/latte, you’ll love it.

Lounge Blend

Coffee Roaster based in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim
We love coffee, its history, cultivation, processing, grading, roasting, blending and brewing.

Art of Coffee

We created this new blend for the Ploughing Championship 2019. The feedback from the coffee tasting at the event was extremely positive so this coffee is now available for all.

The name Nina is chosen to honour the legendary singer Nina Simone. We always listen music (all genres from jazz to dub) while we roast coffee. Just a couple months ago when we were working on this blend we listened a lot of her fantastic music, so when we had to choose a name, the answer came immediately, it must be Nina. You can read more about this here.

The coffees used in this blend – Burundi and Indonesia Kalossi. Two very different coffees creating an exciting taste profile. It’s strong-bodied, sweet and spicy with honey notes.

Nina

This blend is complementing our first two heavy-bodied blends with its lighter body and well pronounced but still gentle acidity. Created just over a year ago we wanted to offer a choice for customers looking for something different. We decided to use just clean and sweet American coffees which are complementing each other well.

The coffees chosen for this blend – El Salvador and Colombia Excelso – have similar characters, but when mixed together these create a much deeper, smoother character than the coffees individually. A perfect example of the “sum is greater than its parts”. As the name suggests it is smooth, clean, coffee with great sweetness and gentle acidity.

Smooth

Ethiopia is the birthplace of the Arabica coffee tree and it produces the most delicate coffees in the word.
The tree grows best at heights of 1,200-1,800 meters. The main crop is from October to December. Only 2% of the crops are owned by the government. Almost half of the population works for some sort of coffee farm. Therefore, coffee plays a big role in the Ethiopian economy.

98% of Ethiopian coffee (of which our Yirgacheffe also belongs to) is planted by small coffee farms, whose farms are no larger than a hectare. This makes it possible for the farmers to take more precise care of their plantation. This is later noticeable with the aroma the coffee gives off in your cup.

The Yirgacheffe carries the name of its origin which lies in the southern portion of Ethiopia and over the region of Sidamo. The Yirgacheffe is washed in the same manner as the Sidamo, during the preparation. This method is only used for the best kinds of coffee.

Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

Indian coffee is well known for its well-defined characteristics like the good body, mild acidity, pleasant aroma and flavour in the cup. In addition to the regular grades of green coffee, India produces value-added coffee such as Monsooned Malabar coffee, a unique Specialty Coffee commanding a premium in the overseas market not only for its distinctive quality also for its best blending attributes.

Historically, “Monsooning” of coffee first happened quite by accident in the days of sailing ships, when it took about six months for unwashed (cherry coffee) coffees to reach Europe. During this period of a long voyage from the Malabar Coast to Europe, the coffee on account of being in the damp hold of ships exposed to sea winds saturated by high humidity lost its original colour and acquired a special aged coffee flavour which was liked by the consumers in Europe.

However, with the opening of Suez and speedy transport by steam ships, the transportation time over the seas has drastically reduced to about one month and the coffees reached the European destination without prolonged exposure to high humidity winds over the sea. As a result, the unwashed cherry coffees reached Europe without the characteristic musty monsooned flavour. This led to a complaint from the European consumers who missed the distinctive musty flavour of the unwashed Indian coffees. With a view to cater to this demand for musty flavour coffees, the coffee exporters situated in the Malabar Coast devised and perfected the process known as “Monsooning of Coffee” in which they successfully recreated the unique aged coffee flavour preferred by many consumers in the Norway, France and Switzerland and also in Ireland.

Monsooning is a traditional process for bringing about some quantitative and qualitative changes in the coffee beans to give the characteristics cup quality of monsooned coffee. Principally, the process is a controlled fermentation of the beans within the limits by adjusting the moisture content, which results in swelling of beans to double their original size, change in colour of cherry coffee from golden brown to pale yellow/ straw colour, bring down the density of beans by about 40-60% and increase the soluble solids when roasted and a mellow cup quality.

Indian Monsoon

Decaffeinated coffees are often treated as not worthy for a coffee lover. We disagree. We pay the same attention to our decaffeinated coffees as any other coffee. So we choose a coffee with a nice clean profile which was decaffeinated the gentlest way possible without the use of harsh chemicals, just carbon dioxide (CO2).
Coffee production started in Peru in the late 18th century, but it only became a major producer in the late 20th century due to many unfortunate events – sometimes violent events – in its history. Most of the coffee farmers are members of a local cooperative. Due to the lack of infrastructure at high altitude where the extremely high-quality lots are located, most of these coffees are blended with other coffees, then sold through the cooperatives.

This Organic Peru CO2 Decaf Arabica is a blend of 2 different lots from 2 different suppliers. The first one is Negrisa S.A.C. Negisa is a coffee processing and exporting company that has its storage and warehouse in Pichanaki – Chanchamayo. Negrisa provides crop funding, drying and storage facilities to seven different Organic and Fairtrade certified cooperatives in Junin, Peru. The coffee is grown between 1,100 and 1,700 m.a.s.l.

The decaffeination process starts with steaming the green coffee beans to soften its cell walls. In the next step, the coffee is taken into a high-pressure chamber filled with CO2. At that pressure, the CO2 is liquid and naturally attaching to caffeine molecules and extracting it from the bean. The caffeine is removed from the liquid CO2. When the coffee beans are taken out to normal atmospheric pressure, the CO2 evaporates. The coffee is dried and ready to be shipped to coffee roasters. About 97-99% of the coffee’s caffeine content is removed by this process. By comparison, this coffee has about the same caffeine content as milk chocolate.

Peru Decaffeinated

Many people would assume that Papua New Guinea’s coffee is the same as Indonesian coffees, but it is just not true. Coffee from Papua New Guinea stands apart with its own unique characters.
This part of the word is ideal for coffee production, but cultivating coffee started relatively late in the 1890s. Apart from the perfect climate, the soil is exceptionally fertile volcanic soil.

The coffee plants growing here were brought from famous growing regions, producing exceptional quality. The coffee industry began to grow in the 1950s with the creation of infrastructure to farming areas.

The name of the coffee farm is Sigri plantation, with a size of 1,000 hectares situated in the Wahgi Valley, in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Soon after it was established in the 1950s and the farm rapidly gained a reputation that has continued to grow, now it is internationally recognized as producing a gourmet coffee equal to the world’s best.

Cup: wonderful complex, clean coffee with medium body, great sweetness, medium acidity
Region: Wahgi Valley, in the Western Highlands Province
Arabica Variety: Typica
Harvest Period: April – September

Papua New Guinea

El Salvador, in general, has ideal conditions for growing coffee, the climate and the fertile volcanic soil producing fabulous coffees.

Commercial coffee production in El Salvador started in the 1850s, by 1880 gourmet coffee had become the main export crop. Since coffee was in such high demand, the Government introduced legislation such as tax breaks for farmers and elimination of export duties for coffee producers. This led to the development of roads and railways leading to the farms and the integration of indigenous communities into the national economy.

The best coffees are classified as SHG (strictly high grown), as these coffees grow above 1350m. Coffee grown at this high altitude and with lower temperature produces a slower maturing fruit and a denser bean which creates a more desirable specialty cup.

Taste notes: sweet, clean coffee, with chocolate notes, medium body and soft acidity
Region: Sierra Apaneca, Llamatepec, Santa Ana and Izalco Volcanoes, Los Naranjos
Arabica Variety: Bourbon, Pacas, Catimor
Harvest Period: January – March

El Salvador

After the great success of our first blend (Lounge) we got to work to create a blend similar to the coffees consumed in continental Europe (not the traditional Italian espresso, there is no robusta in this and roasted lighter). We created this blend to have multi-dimensional flavours: body, subtle acidity with some sweetness.

The base coffee chosen for this blend is the clean and sweet El Salvador SHG. In order to add more flavour to this blend, the heavy-bodied, syrupy Indonesia and the fruity, flowery Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffees are used. The result is a medium-bodied coffee with very nice aftertaste.

Fusion Blend

The flavour of the coffees growing on the fertile volcanic soils of the Indonesian islands is very distinctive, earthy, a bit woody, heavy-bodied, nowhere else to find these qualities. This coffee is cultivated by smallholders on the island of Sulawesi (formally known as Celebes). The central highland at the western part of the island are populated by indigenous people known as Toraja with rich culture and fascinating traditions.

Coffee production started by the Dutch East India Company in the late 17th century, with coffee seed brought from Malabar in India. Coffee production was very successful and Indonesia became a global player in the coffee word.

The coffees from Indonesia has a very distinctive character due to the post-harvest process. The hybrid process combines an element of washed and natural processes called semi-washed process. This method is dramatically reducing the natural acidity of the coffee and increasing its body, creating a softer, rounder, heavy-bodied cup of coffee. These flavour notes are unique to Indonesia and it is in high demand all over the world.

Art of Coffee

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Art of Coffee

🇮🇪 Ireland

Coffee Roasts

El Salvador

Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

Fusion Blend

Indian Monsoon

Indonesia Blue Sulawesi Raja Toraja

Lounge Blend

Nina

Papua New Guinea

Peru Decaffeinated

Smooth

New Coffee Review