Quality standards
What we check, and what we refuse
A standard is only worth stating if it can fail. Every line on this page is something that has a threshold attached, and a consequence if the lot misses it.
Most quality pages are a list of adjectives. Hand-picked, carefully selected, meticulously roasted. None of those can be failed, which means none of them are standards.
What follows is the actual sequence a lot goes through before it reaches you, with the numbers attached. Where a check is done by the farm rather than by us, we say so.
At the farm
Geisha ripens unevenly, so a plot is walked several times across a season and only fully ripe cherries are taken. Strip-picking a lot like this would put unripe fruit into the batch and cost more in cup score than it saves in labour.
Cherry left sitting begins to ferment uncontrolled. The mill is a few hundred metres from the trees, which is the practical advantage of a farm that processes its own coffee.
Dried to 10 to 12 percent moisture and roughly 0.55 water activity. Dried too fast and the bean cracks. Too slow, and mould becomes a real risk, particularly on naturals.
Green coffee is allowed to settle after drying rather than being roasted straight off the patio.
Before we buy
Assessed against the Specialty Coffee Association protocol. Eighty is the specialty threshold. A lot that does not clear it is not a lot we can honestly sell under this name, at this price.
Specialty grade permits no primary defects in a 350 g sample. A single sour, black or mouldy bean is enough to taint a whole brew.
We buy one lot from one farm. There is no blending step at any point where a cheaper coffee could enter the bag.
We taste the actual lot before we buy it, not last year's lot from the same farm.
Roast and pack
Light enough to retain the volatile aromatics that define the variety, developed enough to avoid grassiness and sourness. The margin between those two points is narrow, which is why density matters.
Small batches hold a profile far more consistently than large ones across a season.
The real date. Not a best-before, which tells you nothing about when the coffee was actually made.
One-way degassing valve. Carbon dioxide leaves, oxygen does not enter. We do not pre-grind, because grinding starts the clock.
Air-freighted rather than sent by sea. It costs several times more and it is the reason the roast date on your bag means something.
What we refuse to do
Standards are easier to judge by their exclusions, so here are ours.
We will not blend Geisha with a cheaper coffee and keep the name on the front of the bag. The wording that permits this is entirely legal and extremely common. If we ever blend anything, it will say so on the label, not in a footnote.
We will not print a best-before date where the roast date should be. A twelve-month best-before on a bag of coffee is a way of avoiding the only question that matters.
We will not roast dark to make a lot forgiving. If a coffee needs a dark roast to taste acceptable, it is the wrong coffee and we should not have bought it.
We will not substitute when a lot runs out. Geisha comes off this farm once a season. When it is finished we wait, rather than quietly sourcing something similar and keeping the page live.
We will not sell coffee we have not tasted.
If we get it wrong
All of the above is a process, and processes fail. If a bag reaches you stale, damaged, or plainly not describing what is in it, email us and we will replace or refund it.
On your first order the bar is lower still. If it simply is not what we said it was, we refund it within 30 days however much of the bag is left, and you keep the coffee. Full terms are on the shipping and returns page.
We would ask one thing in return, which is that you tell us what it actually tasted like. At our size that information is worth more than the order was.