Sometimes life just calls for a big chocolatey coffee. This roast is all about getting that rich chocolate flavour into your cup, giving a delicious background of orange marmalade acidity and lots of fudgey sweetness.

We've worked hard to develop a rich, full coffee, but still tastes clean and results in an espresso with lots of complexity served black and capable of giving lots of character and depth your longer drinks.

This edition:
50% Brazilian Monte Carmelo - Pulped Natural
30% Indian Melkodige Estate - Washed
20% Honduras Serendipia - Washed

Barnraiser

Heart & Graft Coffee Roasters

Miriam grew up on her farm, which gives her an instinctive understanding of cultivating coffee in harmony with nature. For the first time, she has produced three different processes. The original natural, a black honey and a red honey. 
This red honey version is a super clean and elegant coffee with subtle notes of caramel and red apple and makes for a very classy filter coffee. There is a lingering peachy sweetness that is reminiscent of the heady aromas drifting around Miriam's farm. 

One of the main motivations of Miriam for choosing organic farming practices is her deep commitment to look after the rivers, forests and birds, all nature in the cycle of life; or "Espiral de la vida" (Spiral of life) as Miriam called it.
Climate change is affecting the existence of coffee plantations, which has made more urgent the work she has always believed in, the need to create micro climates by reforesting the woods. Miriam has dedicated herself to constantly plant trees, a practice that you can notice in her nursery filled with both baby coffee plants and saplings

Here, she explains the process the coffee goes through after being picked:

"The honey coffee process begins at the time of harvesting the coffee, it is here that the cherries are selected once they are 100% ripe. After finishing the harvesting process, the cherries are placed in raised bed under shade to extract some damaged beans."

Then the ripe cherries (colour like red wine) are placed in a tank filled with water, in that way the cherries are hydrolysed overnight, from around 3 in the afternoon until the next morning. After this time the wet cherries are deposited in clean bags and placed in the pulper hopper to be de-pulped.

They are transferred to the solar dryer, patios or under shade to be dried from 8-12 days (this depending on the weather). Once the coffee is dried to an 11 to 12.5 % of moisture content, it is packed in bags and stored in our warehouse at the farm, ready for the export preparation and shipment as agreed by the by our coop."

There is something very satisfying about tasting these coffees side by side and tasting the remarkable difference these processing methods make. The red honey is a clean classy version of the big boozy natural. You can buy both coffees from the same farm and have two completely different flavours.

Miriam Perez Red Honey

We are a just sooo darn proud to be able to offer this coffee!  COMSA is a brilliant inspirational Co-op, in Marcala from the La Paz region in South West Honduras. The co-op pioneers organic farming methods and a centre for education for farmers who want to improve the quality of their coffee and engaging children and young people in learning how to look after the land and themselves, and focussing on techniques that improve and sustain top speciality coffee

Spin round the globe to Manchester in Febuary. This is when we first met Suita Diaz Nolasco. She called into the roastery with a travel bag and some samples. Her family have been a key part of setting up the co-op and It was fantastic to hear her story of how she was awarded a scholarship by the UK government to study here, working towards an MA in business and marketing to help her further the cause of speciality coffee and farmers in Honduras.

We loved hearing about the coffee, and all the amazing and visionary work the coop is doing. But we wouldn’t buy the coffee based on the story, we only have limited buying resources, so every lot we buy is a careful investment for us…. “Oh, I know…just try the coffee” said Suita with a twinkle. So we did. And it was so good! We tapped up various contacts and arranged to buy direct from the co-op, and we know this is the start of a beautiful relationship!

The coffee is wonderfully complex, packed with a multi layered tropical juicy fruit acidity, with a jammy sweetness delivering all that flavour on a bed of luscious mouthfeel.  That magical combination of sweetness, fruity complexity and mouthfeel that enhances flavour. On filter, there is all that pineapple and pomegranate, with the mouthfeel carrying a hazelnut and caramel tone. Its a wonderful espresso. It makes one of the best 4/6 oz long blacks I've ever had! No more than 5/6 oz milk on a big double of this (19g / 30-30secs / 35-40g) but there is a fantastic vanilla and caramel tone to be had!

It’s a beautiful thing, and we’re so happy to bring the fruit of all this work to our city! We’ve called it Serendipia, in honour of the magic that happens when terroir, skill, experience and persistence at origin and a couple of flavour obsessed coffee roasters, work together.

Honduras Serendipia

This is a big full bodied coffee from a stunning estate in the South of India.
With heaps of sweetness and body, this is a true Mystere, a comfort coffee with bags of character. 
Its very easy to brew however you choose, with notes of rich cocoa and baked plums giving a satisfying morning espresso or a long lazy french press. 
We draw out the roast a little bit lower and slower, to allow all those sugars to develop and brown beautifully. As ever, the real work is done by the farmers, our job is not to spoil it! 

The estate has been family run since the 1940's, well worth checking out their website, here: Melkodige Estate 

Melkodige is western facing, hot during the day with plummeting night temperatures due to moisture laden clouds from the sea. This sort of micro climate is perfect for developing coffee cherries with a high sugar content and the dense forest provides rich nutrients packing those cherries with flavour.  

The estate is very close to Kudremukh, one of twenty two UNESCO bio diversity hotspots. These conditions, combined with a family of agronomists driving quality and sustainability gives us a coffee with a beautiful combination of full body and sweetness, with an exceptional clean cup. 

There is some fantastic work happening in Indian coffee at the moment, we're excited about this one, and really happy to have something so spot on for Mystere fans! Enjoy!

Mystere et Prestige

A new Loveshack is always an exciting thing for us here at Heart & Graft HQ. That soft rounded profile, medium body and juicy sweetness just means a coffee you can drink all day long. At the moment we are super lucky and have two brilliant Loveshack style coffees in the range to offer you, our Brazil Monte Carmelo can be found here if you want to learn about this coffee. For my money and an interesting comparison I would buy a bag of each and try side by side to see how different Loveshack coffees can be from one another but still have an underlying theme flowing through them.

Onto the Don Claudio though! This coffee comes from COOPEAGRI cooperative, who are situated in the town of San Isidro De El General in San Jose Province. This coffee is a cooperative lot. This means that rather than being from a particular farm this coffee is made up of some of the best cupping coffees from multiple producers and farmers within the cooperative group. This kind of coffee is something we like to offer alongside smaller microlots from specific farms. We like them as they give an expression of how a cooperative grows coffee as a whole group, from which you can then begin to explore smaller and smaller lots from the different producers in that group. Think of the Don Claudio coffee as a gateway coffee to the work of COOPEAGRI, a group we hope to explore more and work with well into the future.

The coop themselves place a huge emphasis on being able to produce their coffees as sustainably as possible, whilst also ensuring their producers reap the benefits of their hard work and efforts. As one of the worlds most bio diverse countries Costa Rican governmental and coffee agency officials are very aware that increasing the amount of sustainable coffee produced by the country is only going to be beneficial into the future. Established in the early 60's COOPEAGRI have expanded from an initial 391 producers to over 5000 to date. Focus on reducing water use for washing coffees by utilising rainwater along side increasing use of raised beds rather than mechanical  dryers for drying coffee means that each bean creates less negative environmental impacts. Where mechanical dryer are used the machinery and motors have been upgraded to ensure that this machinery is as efficient as possible means that those negative impacts are mitigated even further. The cooperative take an active stance in working with NAMA workshops to ensure they are up to date with the latest developments and techniques to ensure environmental impacts that contirbute directly to climate change are either removed, reduced or planned to do so in the future.

Before we do that all important "what does it taste like?!" bit let's just address how to brew this coffee. This one is not for espresso. The roast profile and character of it just doesn't suit that way of brewing. This one is all about slow brewing on filter applications. Our go to for it is the Sage Precision Brewer (which you can also get from us just drop an email to wholesale@heartandgraft.co.uk) 

Taste wise this is classic Costa Rican in it's profile. Insanely clean and well balanced, with that lovely intense sweetness we almost expect from coffees from CR. Fragrance wise this one gives off a beautiful orange peel mixed with caramel vibe when ground fresh. It's got a hint of biscuity/buttery/nutty character that kind of foxed us at first. James zoned in on malted notes and that's what it gives off on closer analysis. In the brew that orange peel note turns deeper and richer, more like candied orange peel and this gives way to a luscious golden raisin sweetness that is stunning. The acidity is not aggressive, steering clear of citrus and more towards that lovely soft rounded acidity of drying or dried fruit. Top this all off with a lovely dollop of peanut brittle aftertaste that seem to linger and you've got a coffee you'll want to brew a gallon of and then another. 

Use 82g of coffee per 1200ml of water through your sage precision filter brewer and you'll get the most delicious structured brew. All the sweetness and balance alongside a wonderful rounded finish. Play around with the various settings on the sage to see which way of brewing you prefer, we love it on gold setting. Best thing is you'll have over a litre to enjoy with pals!

This ratio of coffee can be scaled to suit your filter brewer at home, your french press or any other filter method.

Another recipe we are loving at the moment is using our Clever Dripper. Use 18g of filter ground coffee. Brew using 250g of clean fresh water just off the boil. Allow to steep for two minutes before allowing a 1 minute draw down into the cup. The body starts really clean and is sweet caramel all the way. This evolves into a beautiful peanut like taste profile. This then leads into a medium long finish that highlights those raisin and orange zest notes.

Loveshack: Costa Rica Don Claudio

Miriam Perez is a  fourth generation coffee farmer, a women's rights activist, pioneer of bio-dynamic farming and the Fair Trade representative for Central America.

The natural process coffee she produces is such a boozy, fruity and sweet coffee, its incredibly distinctive and is a favourite of ours either as espresso or filter, and its a wonderful coffee for you to enjoy at home.

There is a real sense of tasting the place with this coffee, it really tastes like somewhere warm and abundant and beautiful! 

Miriam is one of the founders of the awesome COMSA coop in Marcala, Honduras. They have been teaching and demonstrating organic farming techniques for twenty years and now have over 1500 farmers farming organically or making the transition. All the organic fertiliser is produced by COMSA recycling waste produced in processing coffee and using natural microorganisms from the local area. Its a beautiful thing!

We were buzzing when she came to visit us in Manchester last year.

 Not only an awesome coffee farmer, but part of our coffee family,  one you are part of when you brew it.

Miriam Perez

For the first time, the awesome coffee pioneer Miriam Perez has produced three different processes. The original natural process, a black honey and a red honey. 
Even though they are from the same farm and coffee cherries, These coffees all have their own distinctive flavours, because after picking they have been processed in three different ways
This black honey process is rich with jammy fruit flavours, cocoa and fabulous heady note of lavender. Its a big bodied sticky sweet coffee that makes an excellent espresso and goes with milk incredibly well. 

Miriam processes her coffee cherries on her farm, which gives her an instinctive understanding of the best way of processing them, cultivating coffee in harmony with nature. 

The honey coffee process begins at the time of harvesting the coffee, it is here that the cherries are selected once they are 100% ripe. After finishing the harvesting process, the cherries are placed in raised bed under shade to extract some damaged beans."

Then the ripe cherries (colour like red wine) are placed in a tank filled with water, in that way the cherries are hydrolysed overnight, from around 3 in the afternoon until the next morning. After this time the wet cherries are deposited in clean bags and placed in the pulper hopper to be de-pulped.

After de-pulping the beans, they are left in the fermentation tank for 24 hours and once they are fermented.

"They are transferred to the solar dryer, patios or under shade to be dried from 8-12 days (this depending on the weather). Once the coffee is dried to an 11 to 12.5 % of moisture content, it is packed in bags and stored in our warehouse at the farm, ready for the export preparation and shipment as agreed by the by our coop."

This is the magnificent work done before the coffee is sent to us for roasting, it's where the flavour comes from, that we roast and you brew!

Miriam Perez Black Honey

Loveshack is back! This one has all the sweetness you could ever want from a coffee. Think a big old slab of pecan pie to start. SLap some peanut butter on top of that pie and then grate some milk chocolate over the top of that and you are close. Through milk the chocolate notes are enhanced, black there is a touch of sweet lemon bonbons in the finish.

Our friends at Olam have come up with some excellent Brazilian coffees in recent years, finding fantastic producer groups to work with. This Monte Carmelo blend of multiple farms and estates is something we have used as the base for our Barnraiser and 60/40 espresso blends for a few years, giving these blends their buttery chocolate base. However this year we decided it's tasting so great that we should run it on it's own.

Olam have written an interesting little blog post you can find here about the history of coffee in Brazil, along with some information about the Eagle Group this lot comes from which you can find here

For espresso we find this one brews best at 20g in to 38g out, within 30-32 seconds, releasing that big sweet hit of sugars and balanced acidity.

Otherwise French Press this bad boy with the papers and some nice tunes whilst the weather is good. 

Loveshack: Monte Carmelo Eagle

Very clean, elegant, complex and balanced, this a prime Chateau 76 coffee. This is the first time in 8 years that a Chateau coffee has been anything other than an East African! The nuances of this made it a no brainer. 

There have been some nice coffees from Myanmar, but nothing thats made us stop and stare at the bowl with that “wait a minute...that’s delicious” big dumb look on our faces. Well this coffee made us do that, which was annoying because the name is really unusual and hard to remember and made it hard to discuss. But once over that hurdle, well this coffee just kept being a delight. 

Phayar Gyi Kone is named after the village in the Ywangan area of the Shan State, Myanmar. This coffee was bought by Christian and Shirani of IndoChina coffee importers who developed fantastic relationships with coffee producers in the region. 

They have linked with a group called Shwe Taung Thu (translates to “Golden Farmer”) which is the name of an association of 18 communities who have come together to move into speciality coffee production, and away from low quality commercial coffee production. 

The climate is hot and dry during harvest, which are ideal conditions for dry processing. The immaculately sorted cherries are spread out on raised beds and moved every hour to ensure even drying. 

It's this attention to detail from dedicated farmers and maximising the potential of local growing conditions that has yielded this absolute belter of a coffee!

We’ve been sampling Myanmar coffees for three years, and its been interesting to see the cup quality improve. This particular coffee clearly stood out as something exceptional and is a fabulous testament to the commitment and skill of the 200 households growing coffee around the village.

Chateau 76: Pha Yar Gyi Kone

Love coffee but not the caffeine? Don't you worry we've got your back intrepid coffee explorer!
The Sugar Cane decaffeination process is one of the most gentle and flavour preserving ways of decaffeinating coffee beans. This lets the natural flavours of the coffee shine through, giving an excellent cup profile.
Locally grown sugar cane is harvested and fermented to produce Ethyl Acetate. This natural by product of the fermentation allows for an exceptionally gentle decaffeination process, with little to no loss of the original coffees flavour profile.  The decaffeination also takes place in Colombia, rather than the coffee being shipped to an American or European decaffeination plant. This vertical integration of locally grown coffee, locally produced sugar cane and a locally situated decaffeination plant means that the coffee undergoes less food miles than some other decaff coffees would traditionally have to. Another benefit of this integration is that more money is kept at origin for investment in the local economy. Plus it tastes fantastic so everyone is a winner!

Regional groups in Tolima gather together large enough lots of speciality grade beans to decaffeinate this in large batches; with an emphasis on sweetness and clean cup being crucial to the criteria for those coffees chosen to be processed. The result is a deliciously sugary, toffee like cup profile backed up with milk chocolate and candied nut notes.

Decaff

We proudly present a stunning coffee from Finca Cual Bicicleta in Honduras, the farm of Oscar Omar Alonso. 

This coffee is extraordinary. Its so sweet and complex, its floral, sweet like peaches and it finishes with a clear lemon drizzle acidity. Its dangerously easy to drink and shines as a filter or espresso! It was a tricky one to find the right roast for, it was more like roasting a washed Ethioipian Yirgacheffe than a Honduran coffee. Persistence has paid off though, its a stunner. 

Finca Cual Bicicleta
In 2003 after approaching COMSA, Oscar learned about the benefits of organic farming and decided to change his farm into organic production. However this saw his coffee crop shrink from 80 tonnes to 8!! It was a horrendous time economically and put Oscar into a very dark place emotionally, something he talks about openly. 

During this time, Oscar had a revelation that the transition was like a bike.

"When you ride a bicycle, you are not polluting, you must keep balance, this ride is designed to move forward and never back, and all the pieces of the chain, the bicycle must work together perfectly so you can keep moving"

(That's our mate Richard on the back, we had to take turns being tandem'd by Oscar!)

The ground on his farm was so dependent on the artificial fertilisers, switching to organic meant the soil needed time to heal. 

Working alongside COMSA, after a few years of lots of organic treatment the farm is producing 120 tonnes of coffee! The coffees are stunning and Oscar with his son Melvin produce a variety of washed, honey and natural process coffees

He is a huge character and a testament to the vision of COMSA, supporting farmers transition from commercial to organic farming, and educating others. 

Oscar has invested in the farm creating areas where the coffee is shade-dried in raised beds, allowing a better quality in his coffee production.

Creative Use of Coconut Shells...
One lovely bit of initiative the farm undertakes is the use of coconut shells that capture and provide humidity to the coffee trees during drought seasons. Oscar collects discarded shells that have been sold and drunk from, takes out the plastic straws and reuses them.

They are buried in the soil, laid on the surface and blended with the organic fertiliser that is produced and applied at the farm. 

When the harvest period is over, the farm becomes a community school where Oscar teaches local children how produce vegetables organically, engaging a whole new generation of coffee farmers!

Oscar words: “I feel very happy that our friends that visited us in 2017, now have made the decision to buy our coffee. We hope to maintain a long-term business relationship if possible and I wish you success in the sales of this product. A hug for everyone".

Back at you big guy. We're so happy to finally have your coffee on!

(That's our Kieron, who Oscar drank under the table, but is still buzzing we have this beautiful man's coffee)

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