This is the first edition of our seasonal blend that we have created. The changing blends throughout the year will always be focused on specialty coffee flavours, with lighter roasts having much more sweetness and complexity, giving a great alternative to our Dark Streets house coffee while still retaining the great qualities we all love from a blend. We went with the cliché ‘LOCKDOWN EDITION’ which has two different roast profiles from two coffees with totally different cup characteristics. The end result of this roast really defines speciality coffee within a blend without taking you too far into the sweet shop. Don’t get confused though, drinking an outright espresso will give you the deepest blackcurrant wine-gum experience – be ready for it! We spent some time getting the

Tasting Notes:
Ethiopia: Masses of fruit flavours on its own such as apricot, sweet raisin & fig, with some raspberry dark chocolate undertones, with an incredibly creamy body.

Brazil: A nutty choice. With some light acidity in the cup. A very balanced coffee and perfect base to any coffee blend whilst retaining its own individuality.

Lockdown Edition

We’re a team of dedicated coffee roasters and experienced baristas. We regularly feature a solid range of exceptional high quality coffees from diverse regions around the world. The Coffee Counter source only the best coffee to buy online. Choosing to buy coffee from us is easy.

You can see the region where our roasted beans are from, along with some images to help guide your selection. 

The Coffee Counter

Maria Genoveva Martinez owns the farm El Guayabito in the Las Casitas area of Corquin, Copan. The 3 and a half hectare farm is situated at 1400masl and mostly planted with caturra. Maria has been working to improve the quality of her coffee for a number of years, since her farm is in an area with great cup quality due to the ideal growing conditions.

With the assistance of the micro-lot project, Maria was able to borrow cash to pay pickers the additional money required to make a selective picking, only picking ripe cherries, but this simple step was critical to unlocking the potential at El Guayabito. Maria produced some of the most floral and complex coffee in Copan this year, and there is so much more to come from this farm.

Nelver

This is our signature house blend. The perfect all-rounder, and burst through milk on espresso perfectly, with tonnes of rich crema and our darkest roast, yet not too dark, with hints of hazelnut, praline, and a zesty finish from the Guatemala. Perfect for a rich and strong tasting brew, roasted just before second crack, and Combining a blend of Brazil 50%, Guatemala 40% and Sumatra 10%.

Our signature all rounder coffee. Its what we serve on our bar. A brilliant blend of Brazil Fazenda,  Guatemala Todosantarita and Indonesian sumatra grade 1. A super rich and smooth coffee. Its roasted a little darker than our single origins and slightly stronger in taste. A superb espresso based drink, which sits incredible well with milk.

Dark Streets

The long term goal is to increase coffee production through farmer training, access to input and education. In line with the rising awareness on the need to conserve the environment, the factory has dugthe waste water soak pits away from the water source where the waste water is allowed tosoak in back to the soil. Coffee is handpicked by the smallholder members and delivered to the Gakundo factory where it is pulped. This initially separates the dense beans from the immature ‘mbuni’s (floaters) using water floatation which means the denser beans will sink and be sent through channels to the fermentation tank.

This first stage of fermentation will last for around 24 hours, after which the beans are washed and sent to the secondary fermentation tank for another 12-24 hours. Once the fermentation process is completed, the beans enter the washing channels where floaters are separated further and the dense beans are cleaned of mucilage. The washed beans will then enter soaking tanks where they can sit under clean water for as long as another 24 hours.

Gakundu AA

Fazenda Lages is a specially selected part of the larger Fazenda Londrina. The Lages plot was created for its quality and unique setting within the farm which displayed themselves in the cup.  Fazenda Londrina a 396 hectare farm is one of four farms owned by the Naimeg group, a family business which was headed up by the late founder Gerson Naimeg. Gerson, the son of a German settler and Brazilian mother, established his first farm in 1965 when he bought a small plot of land in Uba located in northern Paraná.  Like many others, he and his family moved to the Cerrado to avoid the annual threat of frost and now they have four farms in the region. The combination of altitude, nutrient rich red loam soil and annual 1500mm rainfall provide a perfect balance to grow coffee. The farm produces a split of around 60% Natural and 40 %Pulped Natural coffees each harvest, with varietals such as Rubi, Yellow Catuai, Red Catuai, Mundo Novo & Topiaz.

We have selected 2 natural processed lots from the Fazenda Lages plot: one is a Rubi varietal, the other is a Catuai. The ripe cherries are machine picked and put into a Pinhalese siphon which sorts through the cherries to ensure only the densest ones are processed naturally. The denser the cherry, the higher the sugar content which makes it more suitable to be processed this way. Once selected the cherries are laid out on raised beds to dry evenly down to 11% moisture. Once dry, the parchment coffee is put into ‘tulhas’ (large wooden vats) where the moisture and flavour is allowed to even out during the resting period. Finally, just prior to shipment, it is dry milled and sorted to remove any defect beans before being packed into 60kg jute bags lined with GrainPro to protect the quality of the coffee during transit and storage.

In line with Brazilian law, 20% of the land at Fazenda Londrina (196 Ha) is given over to a nature reserve where indigenous plants provide a habitat for wildlife. This coupled with the social standards which have been established for the people that work the land, has led to Rainforest Alliance certification for the farm.

Brazil – Fazenda

Decaf

Another nutty coffee, yet still slightly complex, once brewed for espresso. Flavours of Red berries and winegums

Huehuetenango is a municipality in the western highlands of Guatemala, running up to the border with Mexico and encompassing a lot of microclimates across its hills and valleys. Members of the Todosantarita cooperative are based on the hills of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America. Spanish is spoken here, but the dominant language is Mam, highlighting the Mayan ancestry of the area.

In 1986, 17 people created a group that was the precursor to Todosantarita and with the help and expertise of Fedecocagua, Todosantarita coop was formally set up 6 years later in 1992. We have been working with them for years, buying as part of a Huehuetenenango SHB, but as we kept noticing their profile standing out, we decided to showcase them as one of our regional selections to highlight the great work they are doing. The Cooperative now consists of 127 members.

After picking, coffee is wet processed and dried on the farm before being shipped in parchment to the Fedecocagua facility for grading and milling, ready for export. Pache, fairly common in Guatemala, is a dwarf mutation of Typica, meaning that it can be planted more densely and thus increase a farms yield.

Guatemala

This is one of the lots that have come from a group of small farmers in the Sidama region of Southern Ethiopia. With the changes to export laws in Ethiopia, small producers are now able to market their coffee directly, but this is still very challenging, and few have access to capital to make this happen. This group of farmers in Sidama all have between 3 and 12 hectares and all have their own export licenses, however this year they have assigned Buriso Amaje as their group leader and he coordinated the milling and export of the coffee alongside the Falcon team in Addis. Since these producers are small, their main limitation is cash flow, so Falcon prefinanced the coffee in order to ensure they weren’t forced to sell their coffee locally for cash. This group have amazing potential and this year we are seeing some of that, but with the help of Falcon’s agronomist we plan to train them on farm management and picking, processing and drying.

Bekele Belachew is the owner of 6 hectares of coffee in the Sagara village in the Bensa district of Sidama. Bekele and his six children and wife do all of the work on the farm, where they compost and add manure and have started pruning their trees. The coffee is grown under the shade of native forest. Bekele and has family grow the 74158 and 74160 varieties which are both selections from the Jimma research centre. These varieties were selected from wild plants in the Metu-Bishari forest in the Illuababora zone in Western Ethiopia. They’re widely distributed varieties across Ethiopia and were selected for their resistance to CBD and high yield. These two selections are known to have very pronounced citrus and floral notes which are prized by coffee buyers.

All of Bekele’s coffee is picked by himself and his family and then processed and dried at their family home. Like many small producers in Ethiopia, Bekele is still producing only natural coffee, since that is the tradition and they don’t have access to a pulping machine.

Bekele Belachew

Rwanda is blessed with ideal coffee growing conditions that include high altitude, regular rainfall, volcanic soils with good organic structure and an abundance of Bourbon. The vast majority of Rwandan coffee is produced by smallholders of which there are thought to be around half a million with parcels of land often not much larger than just one hectare per family. Coffee is grown in most parts of the country, with particularly large concentrations along Lake Kivu and in the southern province. Rwandan smallholders organise themselves into cooperatives and share the services of centralised wet-mills or washing stations as they are known locally. Flowering takes place between September and October and the harvest runs from March to July, with shipments starting in August through December.

The Ruvumbu washing station is situated in the southwest corner of the country on the mountainous shores of Lake Kivu. Like many other washing stations in Rwanda, Ruvumbu started life as a cooperatively run endeavour, which has since seen investment by private owners and management. Justin Musabyimana – a local farm owner and manager of the Mahembe washing station, also in Nyamasheke – took over in 2014. Musabyimana’s involvment marks a period of greater stability, after several difficult years under previous cooperative management.Under Musabyimanas ownership, Ruvumbu has gone from strength to strength. Volumes are up from 100 MT to 250 MT of coffee cherries processed in recent seasons. In addition to increased volume, the station is producing some of the best quality coffee in Rwanda: Ruvumbu took 3rd place overall in the 2014 Rwanda Cup of Excellence Competition, and was given a Presidential Award at the event for receiving a cupping score above 90 points.

Ruvumbu

Brazil – Sitio Da Torre

Five farms now make up the Café Granja La Esperanza: Cerro Azul, Las Margaritas, La Esperanza, Potosi and Hawaii. With a reputation for producing competition winning coffees, processes are matched with varieties to produce unique flavour profiles.

Tres Dragones gets its name from three furnaces that are used to generate the heat for drying the coffees on the Potosi farm. Located in Caicedonia and comprising of 52 hectares, 34 hectares goes in to producing the Colombia variety that this lot is comprised of.

They produce a few lots here; Tres Dragones, Sidra, Tabi, Burila, and the main contributor to Sweet Valley. This is the original farm, and has produced some of the most exciting lots for us over the last few seasons.

The Colombia varietal is a commonly found hybrid between Hybrid-de-Timor and Caturra, great for rust resistance and with a high yield potential. When picked, the coffee is fermented for 19-22 hours before pulping and fermented again an additional 35 hours. Transported to a silo and left to dry 48 hours before finally being taken to the solar driers where it will rest for around 15 days.

Colombia – La Esperanza

Cerro Las Ranas is not only one of the more significant estates belonging to the JASAL group, but also a national forest reserve donated to National Forest Association of El Salvador. The farm belongs to Jose Antonio Salaverria. The JASAL group of farms are situated amongst the Apaneca Ilamatepec mountain range, part of the Cordelliera de Apeneca. This volcanic range runs through the Ahuachapán, Santa Ana, and Sonsonate departments in the west of El Salvador, and is where many of the Cup of Excellence producing farms are located.

The farm itself is part of a national forest reserve which, at its highest point has a lagoon that is home to thousands of frogs, which, at certain times of the year are to be found across the farm. So ubiquitous are these that the symbol for the Jasal group has become a frog, and the coffee name, ‘Ranas’, translates to English as frog, whilst ‘Cerro’ means mountain or hill. San Francisco is a demarkation within the farm often used as a separate farm in itself.

This coffee also contains the varietal referred to as HSF, an abbreviation for Hibrido de San Francisco, giving away the fact that this farm lent its name to the Bourbon x Pacas cross here discovered. Cup quality is very similar to Bourbon, but it has a slightly higher productivity and shows greater tolerance to rust, though is not completely resistant.

We’ve worked with Jasal over the years to develop many variations of processing through our Los Nogales project, and a consistent favourites have been the soaked and double soaked. We’ve also always favoured the San Francisco plot so are combining the two in this soaked offer.

Coffees are milled at the groups Benficio Las Cruces, located in nearby Santa Ana. Despite being a historic processing centre with over 100 years behind it, it has been regularly updated to and is currently renovated to contain wet and dry processing facilities, along with eco-friendly equipment, raised African beds, patios and mechanical driers. Soaked coffees are processed as washed – cherry is received, pulped with a demucilager that uses high pressure water to remove 98% of the pulp in 1-2 minutes and then the beans are submerged in tanks for 10 hours to develop. Any additional floaters not caught before can also be removed at this point. Once complete, the beans are taken to the patios for drying under the sun; this is usually 12-15 hours but of course is weather dependent.

El Salvador San Francisco

Elvis Reinerio Tineo Rafael is a second-generation coffee producer who owns land in the El Diamante area of Jaen. Elvis himself owns 3 hecatres of land, which is planted with bourbon, caturra and catuai and sits at an altitude of 1750 to 1900masl. Elvis and his family work the land together, coordinating their picking, processing and drying and sharing their facilities. Over the last few years Elvis has been investing in improving the quality of his coffee, improving the quality of picking and experimenting with pre-fermentations and different fermentation methods.

Elvis has participated in the Cup of Excellence competition two years in a row, in 2018 he finished 7th and in 2019 in the top 30

This coffee is a mix of bourbon, caturra and catuai varieties from the highest part of Elvis’s farm. The cherries were picked, washed and floated before being macerated in the cherry for 48 hours. The coffee was then dried under shade for 30 days.

El Diamante

El Diamante is one of the closest coffee producing areas to the city of Jaen and therefore has a huge cooperative presence, at least in the lower elevations. We work with a couple of coffee producing families in El Diamante, who have farms from 1600 to 2000masl. The main varieties grown in the medium altitudes is catuai and castillo, and at higher altitudes it is all bourbon, caturra and typica. El Diamante is one of the few areas in Jaen to have protected forests, which are home to a variety of flora and fauna native to the region. Not only that, there are also many water sources that supply much of the water to the city. This thriving natural environment creates a beautiful setting to grow coffee, but also contributes to the richness and stability of the soils in the area. The cup profile of the coffees in this area is very distinct, with a heavily fruited cup and a pronounced acidity.

Peru – Elvis Tineo Rafael

Rwanda – Kinini

Decaf – Swiss Water

Bookkisa is the name of a sub kebele (Hamlet) where the Bookkisa group of 38 farmers are located.
Average farm size of each member is 2.55 hectares.
The coffee grows under a canopy of natural forest, much like most of Guji Coffees in the area. The fertile red land is made of Clay and Loam.
All of these farmers are trained in agronomy and post-harvest practices by the “King of Guji”, Ture Waji, whom is also running the drying stations.
What’s unique about how these drying stations are managed, including Wosasa, is how the drying beds had been handled, each day lot is tracked with a tag and kept separate from the other.
Each tag is listing the specific delivery and the start date of drying and relative Moisture Content Readings for each day, in order to guarantee a slow even drying process to insure quality and longevity of the coffee.

Ethiopia Bookisa

Huehuetenango is a municipality in the western highlands of Guatemala, running up to the border with Mexico and encompassing a lot of microclimates across its hills and valleys. Members of the Todosantarita cooperative are based on the hills of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America. Spanish is spoken here, but he dominant language is Mam, highlighting the Mayan ancestry of the area.

In 1986, 17 people created a group that was the precursor to Todosantarita and with the help and expertise of Fedecocagua, Todosantarita coop was formally set up 6 years later in 1992. We have been working with them for years, buying as part of a Huehuetenenango SHB, but as we kept noticing their profile standing out, we decided to showcase them as one of our regional selections to highlight the great work they are doing. The Cooperative now consists of 127 members.

After picking, coffee is wet processed and dried on the farm before being shipped in parchment to the Fedecocagua facility for grading and milling, ready for export. Pache, fairly common in Guatemala, is a dwarf mutation of Typica, meaning that it can be planted more densely and thus increase a farms yield.

Guatemala Todosantarita

The Kii factory is located in Ngairiama in the Gichugu division of Kirinyaga district in Central Province.
It is one of 3 factories, along with Kiangoi and Karimikui, which make up the Rungeto Farmers Coop Society.
This coop was established in 1953 and now has around 3507 members. Each smallholder member has around a hectare of land for growing coffee alongside vegetables for the family. The area has rich and fertile red volcanic soil at altitudes of 1700 to 1900 metres above sea level and receives between 1600 and 1900mm of rainfall annually.
The coffee is handpicked by the smallholder members and delivered to the Kii factory where it is pulped.
This initially separates the dense beans from the immature ‘mbuni’s (floaters) using water floatation which means the denser beans will sink and be sent through channels to the fermentation tank.
This first stage of fermentation will last for around 24 hours, after which the beans are washed and sent to the secondary fermentation tank for another 12-24 hours.
Once the fermentation process is completed, the beans enter the washing channels where floaters are separated further and the dense beans are cleaned of mucilage.
The washed beans will then enter soaking tanks where they can sit under clean water for as long as another 24 hours. This soaking process allows amino acids and proteins in the cellular structure of each bean to develop
which results in higher levels of acidity and complex fruit flavours in the cup – it is thought that this process of soaking contributes to the flavour profiles that Kenyan coffees are so famed for.
The beans are then transferred to the initial drying tables where they are laid in a thin layer to allow around 50% of the moisture to be quickly removed.
This first stage of drying can last around 6 hours before the beans are gathered and laid in thicker layers for the remaining 5-10 days of the drying period.
The dry parchment coffee is then delivered to a private mill and put into ‘bodegas’ to rest – these are raised cells made of chicken wire which allows the coffee to breathe fully.

The Coffee Counter

0.0

The Coffee Counter

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Coffee Roasts

Brazil – Fazenda

Dark Streets

Decaf – Swiss Water

El Salvador San Francisco

Ethiopia Bookisa

Guatemala Todosantarita

Kenya Kii AA

Peru – Elvis Tineo Rafael

Rwanda – Kinini

Coffee archive

Bekele Belachew

Brazil – Sitio Da Torre

Colombia – La Esperanza

Decaf

Gakundu AA

Guatemala

Lockdown Edition

Nelver

Ruvumbu

New Coffee Review