Nélida Zurita is a single mother and leader of the women’s committee of her local producer co-operative, known for her innovations in coffee processing. This lot from her farm is a great example of her ambitious creativity: the coffee owes its incredible vibrant flavour to how Nélida took the coffee cherries, removed the fruit and then placed the beans in an oxygen free environment for 90 hours to foster a quick fermentation, which passed intense flavours to the coffee. From there the coffee was treated more traditionally, stopping flavour development at the perfect point for a delicious balanced intensity.

In coffee Peru is known for its incredible geography that influences the weather coming off the Pacific and, together with its many small farms, creates a unique terroir for coffee. As a country its focus on quality started from a challenging place after poor management of the coffee industry meant infrastructure and education was neglected. Peru is one of the best examples of how Fair Trade jump started the industry, as it pushed development and community investment which helped producers attain a sustainable production level. Now those producers look towards the next step and begin focusing on specialty coffee, endeavouring to create exceptional coffees that garner even higher acclaim and with them, higher prices.

Lajas

Kiss the Hippo is a speciality coffee brand devoted to creating the ultimate coffee experience.

We accomplish this through a considered approach to coffee making that places a strong appreciation for quality and sustainability at the forefront. We aim to offer the most refined freshly roasted coffees, served in beautiful spaces as part of a thoroughly memorable service experience.

Kiss the Hippo Coffee

Certified organic by the Soil Association, this version of our George St. Blend is 100% direct trade, meaning we worked directly with the producers or co-operative to ensure a sustainable supply chain. Strong enough to shine through milk, George St. is carefully roasted to highlight the coffee’s robust, natural flavors. This version of our mainstay blend was created by blending two coffees from producer co-operatives: the Colombian Los Vascos and a Rwandan coffee called Sholi. Together, they create a coffee that is a crowd-pleasing combination of sweetness and strength.

Los Vascos is a community lot we source from producers who live around the small town of Planadas in Colombia’s Tolima region. Last autumn we travelled to the town for our first sourcing trip and while there cupped through dozens of lots to help define just what we wanted Vascos to be. In George St., Vascos gives the coffee much of its body and chocolate flavours.

The Rwandan co-operative Sholi was born out of a women producer group called Kundwa. Looking to grow, they decided to build a co-operative as a force for good in the community and so they put that ethos into their new name. Sholi was started in 2008 and the name translates to “mutual assistance.” The co-operative has been working together to support its members by offering training, financing, and health insurance, as well as building medical centres, wells and a village community centre.

George Street Blend

This lot from Jairo Arcila is completely unique and defies many expectations of what coffee can be and what some origins can achieve. Anaerobic naturals are rare from Colombia because the cool damp weather on most farms makes it difficult for coffee to dry without causing defects. In order to be successful, Jairo developed his own process called EF1. The cultivar of this lot is castillo, which although common in Colombia seldom reaches such high quality scores. To achieve these results, Jairo has expertly transformed his farm to create ideal conditions for growing this challenging cultivar.

Anaerobic natural processed coffee is a style of processing that is relatively new, quite simple, but also very risky. Jairo’s unique approach involved picking the coffee and allowing it to ferment in the cherry for 24 hours. After this he sealed the cherries in a bag, removing the oxygen, and submerged the bag in water to keep it at a steady 22 degrees Celsius. He then removed the coffee from the bag and dried almost all the way to the goal of 11.5% moisture content, stopping at 18%. He then put the cherries back in the bag for 50 hours before taking them out again to dry down to 11.5%. This whole process runs the risk of developing mould, which can negatively affect the final cup. Nevertheless, Jairo expertly managed to create an incredibly sweet and unique coffee.

Maracay

The Sholi co-operative’s name comes from a local term “abateraninkunga ba sholi” which translates to mutual assistance. This value is at their core, a drive to work together to enrich the community—Sholi has helped to build health clinics in their remote region for everyone to use. For their members, Sholi has focused on expanding yields by planting coffee trees which have now surpassed the 400,000 mark. We chose to work with Sholi not only because we want to roast incredible coffee, but because we want to support people who are making a difference.

The story of Rwandan coffee is one of the great success stories in the world of coffee. After the horrific genocide of 1994, the new government focused on developing the country not only economically but also socially towards gender equality and meritocracy. Coffee became a tool to achieve both these goals. A program was created which planted the same cultivar, red Bourbon, across the country. This was paired with farming education and the funding of co-operatives. These co-operatives embodied the new ethos of the nation with women, who previously were rarely free to hold employment or power, assuming leadership roles. Now Rwandan coffee is entering its next stage, with the most progressive producers experimenting and creating coffees completely unique to them—just like this lot from Sholi.

Sholi

Los Vascos is a community lot made up of a small collection of farms near Bilbao in Colombia. The farms that make up this coffee are incredibly similar—usually only a couple hectares or so in size and all family run, the producers create a coffee with the same signature soft acidity and round sweetness. Each producer’s small lots are pooled together based on their flavour profile which is identified at the daily tastings held at the co-operative mill. This lot was created specifically to be a crowd pleasing easy to drink coffee, something everyone will love.

The thing that allows the diverse group of producers in Bilbao to create such a uniform lot is their usage of the same cultivars: caturra, Colombia and castillo. Cultivars are the different kinds of coffee plants, like how granny smith or red delicious apples can completely change the experience when you taste them. Cultivars are also artefacts of history—caturra was the traditional cultivar of Colombia before a fungus called rust killed most of it off. The government then released a cultivar named Colombia at the height of the crisis, bred to be resistant to the fungus. It held out for years until a second crisis hit, and in response to this castillo was released. Now farms across Colombia have a collection of the cultivars, all usually mixed together. Lessons from the agroforestry world tell us that there’s a strength in this genetic diversity—each farm having many different cultivars can help to avoid the next crisis.

Los Vascos

The Donna espresso blend is our nod towards a more traditional coffee flavour. We find coffees that have the inherent characteristics of deep chocolate, with a low acidity and lots of body. We then roast a little darker than our other coffees, to the point where the coffee’s natural sugars are browned to a dark caramel quality. Donna tastes robust and strong but still allows the natural characteristics of the Brazil Rio Verde and the Colombia Tacueyó to shine through.

The Brazilian coffee Rio Verde is one farm that is part of the larger Ipanema coffee estates. With a history of over 100 years in producing coffee, Ipanema is known as one of the great estates of Brazil as they provide some of the most consistently high quality coffee in the country. In the Donna blend it is the Rio Verde that gives the coffee its deep chocolate character and its big body.

Colombia’s Cenoic co-operative is the umbrella organization for groups of producers across the region of Cauca. Tacueyó comes from one of the co-operative’s producer groups called Central Cooperativa Indigena del Cauca or ASPROCRIT. This group of 540 families all have similar sized farms of just a couple hectares mixed into natural forest. These farms preserve their natural ecosystems and their low intervention farming is among the world’s most sustainable. Tacueyó gives Donna its caramel sweetness and balances the cup to ensure it is low in bitterness.

Donna Blend

Duromina holds a special place in the world of specialty coffee. It originated, like many of the mills in Ethiopia, as a co-operative with hundreds of producers growing coffee trees cultivated from wild seeds. What makes Duromina different is that the original producers who created the mill in 2010 worked with the NGO Technoserve, which focuses on helping organizations build infrastructure for long-term sustainability. Just two years into the partnership, Duromina achieved the grand prize at the East Africa Taste of Harvest competition, bringing international acclaim and attention.

Ethiopian coffee is one of the world’s most unique and beloved. Known to commonly have a floral characteristic, it is worlds apart from coffee’s commonly described flavours of chocolate and nuttiness. There are several factors that help to create this unique flavour profile. Firstly, Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, making it ideally suited to growing coffee trees. Secondly, the cultivars grown are largely selected from wild mutations created through thousands of years of evolution. Finally, because so many small producers contribute small amounts of coffee to the larger lot, there is a care and attention to detail not possible in other places.

Duromina

The Capucas co-op is incredibly active in bettering their community. They have a long list of initiatives, including building a clinic to offer free health care to members and their families. In partnership with the UNAH University, they opened a virtual classroom to teach people in the community new skills and advance their education. They have built football fields so they can give children in the community access to safe activities. They have even created a small hotel and education centre to teach people about coffee from seed to cup, including barista techniques. The co-op is a model for what a group of people who come together can create.

The coffee of Capucas is broken into many small lots, with different processes and cultivars. This lot is a catuai that was processed like a washed coffee before is it was decaffeinated by Swiss Water decaf. The Swiss Water method is a zero chemical, all natural method where the coffee is exposed to warm carbonated water. The warm water expands the beans and the carbon binds with the caffeine inside. Once the water is removed the caffeine goes along with it. The coffee is then dried and sent to us.

Capucas Decaf

The Lady is the name of a small coffee mill started by Thi Ha and Su Nandar in 2018. The coffee cherries are grown by the people in the nearby village of Nwar Ban Gyi and then brought to the mill for processing. The Lady is an incredibly unique coffee as it is a carbonic macerated honey, a processing method that started in the wine world. In this case coffee is pulped with just the skin removed (the honey part of the process) and is then placed in a tank which is filled with carbon dioxide. The coffee ferments from the inside out with the CO2 breaking down the acids and sugars, creating a more complex and interesting cup.

Although specialty coffee from Myanmar is relatively new, the South-East Asian country has been cultivating the plant since 1885. The colonists who followed after the invasion by the British Empire planted coffee, but there was never widespread adoption. In 2016 the first lots of specialty coffee left the country and were exported to the west, allowing the world to finally experience this new growing region. Most production is centered around the Southern Shan region, where cultivation began in 1885. What’s interesting is how fast coffee has been developing in Myanmar and how swiftly producers have adopted some of the most innovative coffee processing methods.

Myanmar, Lady

@ilya-gruzdev пробовал этот? 

@emil Да, я пил его, не могу сказать, что как то меня поразил, если честно
Вообще, мне кажется, что российские ростеры используют гораздо более крутое зерно, по крайней мере, сварщица точно

@ilya-gruzdev так, я уже столько раз слышал о сварщице, что обязан ее попробовать

@emil у меня для вас 3 вида отложено - заезжайте )


Jairo Arcila’s coffee has become a mainstay at Kiss the Hippo. Its massive sweetness and high flavour clarity creates an intense and unique flavour experience. What we find so special about his coffee is how Jairo has taken the extremely common and oftentimes lower quality castillo cultivar and, through his expert growing and processing, produced a coffee that rivals some of the world’s most high-end lots.

The anaerobic processing method involves picking the coffee cherry and, with the seed still in the fruit, fermenting it in a zero oxygen environment. This type of processing is key to creating such a wildly unique cup.

Arcila

Burundi, Kirundo

Peru, Gloria

Honduras, Sosa Decaf

Colombia, Shattah Bronze Tip Gesha

The Dalton family are third generation coffee farmers in one of Guatemala’s most beloved coffee regions, Antigua. The region is a massive valley surrounded by three volcanoes and is home to the ancient capitals of Mayan people. What makes Antigua such an incredible region for coffee is what helps all the coffee regions that line the Pacific: dynamic weather rolls in, giving the plants the water they need, while intermittent cloud cover and cooler weather slows the ripening of the fruit so the seed inside can gently mature.

This coffee shows so much of what is typical and beloved of Guatemalan coffees, especially from Antigua: a round, honey-like flavour holds everything together with notes of sweet chocolate and delicate, refreshing poached peach.

This lot was processed using the washed method, which retains acidity so the coffee has a vibrancy both as a filter and espresso. As an espresso, this coffee cuts through milk and creates a crowd-pleasingly sweet latte, flat white, or cappuccino. As a filter the coffee is incredibly balanced with a round, lush sweetness.

The Dalton Family

Peru, Lino

Uganda, Kawacom Decaf

Components:
Peru- Lino, Natural
Burundi - Kirundo, Washed

Every year we release a new version of our Anniversary Blend. Made up of coffees from the origins we’re most excited about, the Anniversary Blend captures what we’re loving about coffee right now. This year we wanted to bring together two origins we’ve been getting the most compliments from: Peru and Burundi.

This blend of a natural Peru Lino and the washed Burundi Kirundo brings together the South American lot’s funky intense berry sweetness with the East African coffee’s complex tea notes. Together, they make a coffee that is massively refreshing and sweet.

The Lino is named after Jose Lino Mendoza, who created the lot. It’s an incredibly complex coffee, while also giving almost a wall of sound in terms of flavour. Naturals are rare from Peru, but this year we released a trilogy of them and Lino was the finale. Big sweet berries with a complex blood orange-like acidity, it was one of our favourites.

Kirundo is by the farm CafeX, which was started as a small private mill processing coffee cherries from local producers. This lot was prepared using the washed method, the most common processing method in Burundi, and is a great representation of the method. The coffee cherry is removed using a de-pulper and then submerged in water to ferment, before being dried in the sun. The Kirundo is complex with lots of black tea and refreshing, lemon-like notes.

Anniversary Blend

Producer: The Diaz family
Farm/Mill: Four Family Farms
Cultivar: Red Pacamara
Location: Chalatenango
Harvest: December - March

Jose Efrin, Jose William, Arnulfo and Santos are The Diaz Family. Parents, children and siblings, their farms sit close together where they pool resources and elevate each other through a collective family bond.

This lot from the Diaz family is a red pacamara. It marks the first time this year we’ve released the cultivar. The first thing you’ll notice with pacamara is that it’s massive. It’s also one of the world’s most high quality cultivars – before gesha, it was often the coffee taking the top spot at producer and barista competitions. It has a huge amount of flavour clarity, with lots of fruit-driven notes.

El Salvador is the most common place to see pacamara because it was developed there in the 1950s by the Institute of Coffee Research. It is a hybrid between maragoype and pacas. The maragoype is where it gets its bigger size, but remarkably it tends to have a much better cup quality than its parents.

Roasting pacamara is exceptionally hard. As a giant bean it tends to be difficult to ensure the internal and external parts of the bean are evenly roasted. By ensuring a roast uniformity we can help develop the bean the same, so that the same flavour compounds are created throughout the bean. When the coffee is eventually brewed, this means a higher flavour clarity and sweeter cup.

El Salvador, The Diaz Family

Producer: Dutra Family
Farm/Mill: Fazenda Dutra
Cultivar: Red & Yellow Catuai
Location: São João do Manhuaçu, Matas De Minas
Harvest: May - August

This Brazil Dutra was decaffeinated using the Swiss Mountain Water Method. This all-natural decaffeination process submerges the unroasted coffee in warm water which is then infused with CO2, similar to soda. The CO2 binds with the caffeine and, when the water is removed, the CO2 and caffeine leave with it.

The Dutra family farm was started by José Dutra Sobrinho, known as Zeca. From 1950 to 1999, when he left the farm to his sons Walter and Ednilson, he built the farm from one hectare up to an incredible 300 hectares of coffee. Through incredibly tireless work, the family has created a farm that captures the signature Brazilian cup profile of chocolatey and sweet coffee.

Brazil is one of the great coffee-producing countries. Rumours of a frost or bad weather will literally move the international prices of coffee. A core part of what makes Brazil so successful in coffee is that it has a signature flavour profile: dark chocolate and sweet nuttiness is so common in coffee, it has become the flavour we remember coffee for.

Brazil, Dutra Decaf

Producer	The Arboleda-Ramirez family
Farm/Mill	
Los Alpes
Cultivar	Caturra
Process	Carbonic Macerated Natural
Location	Los Farallones, Antioquia
Altitude	
1,740 masl
Harvest	October - December
 
Expect notes of Strawberry Ice Cream, Jasmine, Blackberry .

Colombia, Los Alpes

Our coffee is roasted and packaged in our nitrogen gas-flushed bags which prolongs its peak quality for over a month. Your coffee order will come from the freshest possible roast and always with weeks of peak freshness left in it.

Ethiopia, Bensa

El Salvador, Las Terrazas

Nicaragua, La Union

Komothai Kenya

Our final coffee from Jean Paul this year is an anaerobic process. This is a relatively new and innovative method of processing coffee that involves fermenting the coffee beans in an oxygen-free environment, typically in a sealed container with limited air access. This controlled environment enables the fermentation to occur under specific conditions that enhance and amplify certain flavours in the coffee beans.

The process involves removing the outer layers of the coffee cherry and placing the beans, along with some of the fruit's mucilage, in a sealed container with little to no oxygen. The container is then left to ferment for a period of time, usually between 24 and 72 hours. During the fermentation process, the coffee beans undergo chemical changes that alter their flavour and aroma.

The resulting coffee often has unique and intense flavours that are different from those produced by other processing methods. The flavours can range from fruity and floral like our Keza to spicy and savoury. The process also allows for greater control over the coffee's flavour profile, enabling producers to experiment with different variables to create a variety of flavours.

Jean Paul manages a farm with approximately 6,000 trees, and he not only processes the coffee from his own land but also from several hundred small-scale local farmers in the surrounding community. The exceptional quality of his coffee is a testament to his unwavering commitment and determination to train and educate

Keza Rwanda

Sitio Pinhalzinho

Colombia, La Virginia

Producer	Bressani Family
Farm/Mill	
Finca San Jeronimo Miramar
Cultivar	Pacamara

Finca San Jerónimo Miramar is a coffee farm located in the Atitlán region of Guatemala. The farm is owned and operated by the Bressani family, who have been farming in the region for over 100 years. The farm is 600 hectares in size, of which 200 hectares are planted with coffee. The coffee is grown at altitudes ranging from 800 to 1,600 meters above sea level.

The Bressani family is committed to sustainable farming practices. They have a private nature reserve on the farm, and they also host a lab to research natural methods for reducing fungi and pests in coffee. In addition to coffee, the farm also produces cocoa, pepitas, passion flower, and honey. They also operate a dairy, producing a variety of cheeses and creams on-site.

The Bressani family is also committed to providing a good living for their employees, and to giving back to the local community. They provide healthcare, education, and financial assistance to their employees and their families. They also support local schools and community projects.

Pacamara, a hybrid of Pacas and Maragogipe, was the culmination of 30 years of research in El Salvador. Pacas, named after the family that discovered this natural mutation of the highly regarded Bourbon variety on their farm in 1956, is a short, hearty tree that is resilient to wind and climate fluctuations, and tends to produce high yields. Pacamara retains the large beans of the Maragogipe but typically produces a deeper, more complex cup. Pacamara was officially rolled out by the Salvadoran Institute for Coffee Research (ISIC) in the 1980s.

Kiss the Hippo Coffee

4.3

Kiss the Hippo Coffee

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Served in Coffee Shops

Coffee Roasts

Brazil, Dutra Decaf

Colombia, La Virginia

Colombia, Los Alpes

Donna Blend

El Salvador, Las Terrazas

Ethiopia, Bensa

George Street Blend

Keza Rwanda

Komothai Kenya

Nicaragua, La Union

San Jeronimo Miramar

Sitio Pinhalzinho

Coffee archive

Anniversary Blend

Arcila

Burundi, Kirundo

Capucas Decaf

Colombia, Shattah Bronze Tip Gesha

Duromina

El Salvador, The Diaz Family

Honduras, Sosa Decaf

Lajas

Los Vascos

Maracay

Myanmar, Lady

Peru, Gloria

Peru, Lino

Sholi

The Dalton Family

Uganda, Kawacom Decaf

New Coffee Review