La Voz que Clama en el Desierto—The Voice that Cries Out in the Desert—is certainly the most poetically named cooperative we have encountered. It also happens to produce some of the most drinkable coffees around. We’ve long used coffees from La Voz to bring sweetness and body to our Hayes Valley Espresso blend. Roasted more lightly, more subtle contours of the coffee’s flavor come to the surface: green apple brightness and delicate aromatics reminiscent of freshly grated nutmeg. The sweetness, thankfully, is as present as ever.
DETAILS
Region: Atitlán
Processing: Washed
Cultivar: Typica, Bourbon, Caturra

Guatemala Atitlán La Voz

Cafes serving guests in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, and Japan. Coffee subscriptions delivering to doorsteps nationwide.

Blue Bottle Coffee

Named for the building specs in our Mint Plaza cafe in San Francisco, this espresso blend is pure pleasure. We reverse-engineered a blue-collar Italian espresso blend (yes, Robusta!) with high-quality organic coffee to make a sturdy, crema-heavy, and unpretentious espresso. If Hayes Valley Espresso is like consuming a volume of In Search of Lost Time in liquid form, then 17ft Ceiling is like flipping through The New Yorker—edifying without being overly taxing.

17ft Ceiling Espresso

@wiltodelta haha yup, wrong blue bottle in location😂

What’s in a name? Well, we’ve always been fans of the opascope, a beautiful tool for projecting handwriting and finely rendered artwork onto a larger surface. We could blab for hours about its quaint design, its bulky contours, its place in our childhood classrooms. But for expediency’s sake, let’s put it this way: The opascope is a tool for taking careful craftsmanship and opening it up for everyone to access and enjoy. Sound familiar? Available only online, Opascope Espresso is a refreshing addition to a lineup once dominated by dense, chocolatey selections. It yields an effervescent shot, packed with stripes of tropicalia.

Opascope Espresso

Bella Donovan is the wool sweater of our blends—comforting, cozy, and enveloping. Our most popular blend, Bella is a variation of the archetypal Moka-Java pairing, in which a wild and jammy natural from Ethiopia finds balance with more substantive coffees from Sumatra and Peru. It stands on the darker side of things, weathers the rigors of the automatic drip machine well, and stands up to milk or cream—though it is just as elegant black.

Bella Donovan

@yury-lifshits rated it quite highly actually 🙃

@em 🤷‍♂️ Maybe I was unlucky 🙂

@mike-kats or maybe he was just randomly putting reviews 🤣

The SL-28 variety originated in Kenya, but thanks to adventurous producers like Finca El Injerto, it’s popping up in all kinds of surprising places. We find the SL-28 grown by El Injerto to be a beautiful expression of the cultivar’s potential. The terrain of the Huehuetenango highlands leads to a gentler flavor profile than you might find in Kenya, with sweetness at the fore. Behind the layers of caramel, however, is the unmistakable glimmer of blackberry that makes SL-28 so beloved.

Guatemala El Injerto SL-28

From the coffee-growing region near the western Colombian city of Popayán, this single origin delivers the chocolate and brown-sugar notes of Latin America along with a delicious complexity and a mix of citrusy and apple-like acidity. We’ve come to expect nothing less from APROCEP, a 100-odd member collective of mostly women farmers. They grow this coffee in the plateaus where evergreens grow alongside palm trees and the soils are mineral-rich, thanks to the nearby Puracé volcano. This lot consists of heirloom varieties such as Typica and Caturra, plus Castillo, a newer disease-resistant cultivar that’s sometimes thought to be of lower quality. We disagree—we love the bright herbaceousness it brings to the cup.

Region: Popayán
Processing: Washed
Cultivars: Caturra, Typica, Castillo

Colombia Popayán Fall Harvest

Inspired by John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, this dense and substantial coffee is not unlike the jazz visionary's signature "sheets of sound.” Our darkest blend, made from organic coffees, is downright viscous in the cup. Just like Coltrane’s ability to cascade into high-pitched octaves with maximum control, this coffee’s inflections of stone fruit lighten without losing focus. Improvisations of milk or cream—in any proportion—shine.

Giant Steps

Three Africas marries the radiant fruit of two coffees from Ethiopia, one washed and one natural, with the balance and authority of a washed coffee from Uganda. Each component excels on its own, but together, they traverse boundaries. No matter the brew method, this blend, which is our brightest, has good body and an approachable complexity that takes to cream well, but stands just as radiantly on its own.

Three Africas

Playlist is like the pair of adult siblings who, after years of talking over one another at the dinner table, finally get along. Two distinct washed coffees become mild and sweet, with flickers of brightness and whispers of fruit. How nice to know that this coffee blend, like family, finds balance when mixed in the right proportions.

DETAILS
Back when playlists were button-pushing acts of love banged out on double cassette players, the sheer effort won undying affection. Now it takes a dialed-in cup of coffee—enjoyed with that same playlist purring in the background—to match such consideration.

Playlist

We developed our darkest espresso for the launch of our first brick-and-mortar in our friend Loring’s garage in Hayes Valley. Years later, it remains the standard espresso in all of our cafes. Lower-toned and minimally bright, Hayes Valley Espresso pulls a straight shot with a voluptuous tawny crema and a somewhat dangerous-looking viscosity. Milk, in any quantity, adds romance to the coffee’s brooding aspects, bringing out the inherent chocolate and adding a smooth, rounded touch.

Hayes Valley Espresso

Set along a rambling river near Popayán, Colombia, El Zafiro is home to expert farmers and some of the world’s most unique coffees. Our latest exceedingly rare single origin is an Ethiopian cultivar, Wush Wush, grown and processed by these dedicated farmers to bring out the complexity hidden within.

Wush Wush is known for being difficult to grow, often deterring farmers from touching the cultivar. However, Nancy Maca of El Zafiro and her family brought Wush Wush to life with their adept farming and adventurous processing methods.

This single origin holds the floral brightness common in Ethiopian cultivars, with tropical highlights of guava and pineapple. However, it takes on its most complex form from the experimental fermentation process used after harvest. Anaerobic fermentation allows for prolonged contact between the seed and fruit, giving this coffee amplified stone fruit and citrus flavor balanced by a smooth ribbon of honey sweetness.

The expressiveness and intricacy of this iteration of Wush Wush stand out as a beautiful divergence from other expressions of the cultivar—one we’ll treasure as a rare find.

Colombia El Zafiro Wush Wush

We believe experiencing a good poem is like enjoying a delicious coffee: the more attention you lend, the deeper your reward. This fall, we’ve partnered with the Poetry Society of America to commission poems that encourage you to slow down as the seasons turn and reflect with a coffee in hand.

Ethiopia Agaro Kata Muduga, one of two coffees in our Fall Poetry Collection, was grown with intention, just like the artistry found in the accompanying poem. This coffee’s jasmine-like aroma is reminiscent of the coffee plant itself. With delicate layers of nuanced citrus and stone fruit, there is a fresh, crisp quality that takes you to an early morning on a coffee farm.

Enjoy the notes of orange blossom, black tea, and lemon zest as you sit with Victoria Chang’s poem and find yourself transported to different lands.

Ethiopia Agaro Kata Muduga

While many of our coffee blends are noteworthy for their sturdiness, the glassy and floral Beta Blend is cut from a different cloth. What began as a collaboration between our sourcing and digital teams has evolved into a delicate counterpoint to our heftier blends that is available for online purchase exclusively.

Beta Blend

Costa Rica, known for its experimental micromills, has changed the way we view many cultivars, and the Costa Rica Tarrazú La Lia ET-47 is a beautiful example of their reimaginings. This Ethiopian cultivar is bright and floral by nature, but when treated with La Lia’s avant-garde honey processing method it becomes a balanced coffee that demands you take sip after sip to unravel its complexity.

To find a more robust flavor in this single origin, the coffee bean is slowly dried, with a generous amount of the fruit’s flesh left on. This red honey processing opens the coffee up to a more robust flavor profile, adding a thick, jammy sweetness that comes to us in notes of maple and brown sugar. This process was expertly employed by the coffee producers at La Lia to balance the cultivar’s inherent brightness. Through the sweet, syrupy body of the coffee we are struck by a sparkle of lemonade and a bite of green apple. We see the ET-47’s floral nature cut through in the coffee’s fruity aroma, reminding us of dried strawberries over a warm bowl of brown sugar-topped oatmeal. With every taste, this coffee offers a new layer of complexity that will surprise and delight the senses.

Costa Rica Tarrazú La Lia ET-47 Red Honey

We believe experiencing a good poem is like enjoying a delicious coffee: the more attention you lend, the deeper your reward. This fall, we’ve partnered with the Poetry Society of America to commission poems that encourage you to slow down as the seasons turn and reflect with a coffee in hand.

Recollection Blend brings together two sweetly fragrant coffees from Ethiopia and Colombia. While these two coffees are lovely on their own, they come together to create a balanced complexity, with delicate notes of floral raw honey and fruity green apple grounded by the richness of caramel.

The taste washes over you in a wave of autumn nostalgia as it takes you back to traditional fall flavors of the past. As a part of our Fall Poetry Collection, this blend was crafted in tandem with an original poem by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Enjoy this coffee and poem together and get lost in reflection.

Recollection Blend

Decaf should never feel like a concession. In fact, we consider this coffee a reward in its own right, especially given that its adherents drink it solely for its flavor.

Like its predecessor, Decaf Noir, Night Light remains a delicious fusion of coffees from Sumatra and Central America, decaffeinated with the mind-boggling and chemical-free Swiss Water Process. And like Decaf Noir, this sweet and satisfying blend proves that decaf never has to compromise flavor—our coffee team describes it as “creamy and versatile” with decadent “malt” undertones.

As for whether or not you still need an actual night light? We’ll let you decide. But we suggest that, like this coffee, your choice is guided by beauty rather than necessity.

DETAILS
Sumatra and Latin America

Blue Bottle Coffee

4.7

Blue Bottle Coffee

🇺🇸 United States

Served in Coffee Shops

Coffee Roasts

17ft Ceiling Espresso

Bella Donovan

Beta Blend

Colombia El Zafiro Wush Wush

Colombia Popayán Fall Harvest

Costa Rica Tarrazú La Lia ET-47 Red Honey

Ethiopia Agaro Kata Muduga

Giant Steps

Guatemala Atitlán La Voz

Guatemala El Injerto SL-28

Hayes Valley Espresso

Night Light Decaf

Opascope Espresso

Playlist

Recollection Blend

Three Africas

New Coffee Review