mycuppa's new Filter Style Coffees

Filter coffees are a segment that is constantly changing and evolving - both in the roasting and the brewing.

 

After 8 months, it's ready - Filter-style coffees

Until now, our strategy had been a steadfast resistance to dive too deep into suppling a plethora of filter style coffees.

Call it being careful or a tad too conservative, but we think it was more about wanting to keep it simple for our customers by avoiding mistakes during purchase.

Historically, we had just one filter offering and to be honest it was not entirely suitable for the ever expanding range of filter applications.

Instead, it was a half-step backwards, lighter version of our general espresso style roast profiles to appease the regular, often daily requests for lighter roasted coffees.

There are valid and sensible reasons why we did not just jump onto the filter coffee bandwagon many years ago like everyone else and it might surprise you as to why.

Quite frankly, the scope and definition of what is a "filter style" is a constantly moving target (and yet still evolving) - a target that many of our customers, with due respect, may not be entirely confident, or sure, of what they might be needing for their brewing requirements.

One person's light is another person's dark and hence the circular nature of defining what is a "filter coffee" and depending upon your perspective a filter style coffee could be incredibly "green" in the Nordic-style of ultra light roasting or contrasting dark roast depths in the US bulk-brew style.

So you can see there is a broad spectrum of possibilities when it comes to filter style.

The demand for filter coffees is growing at a faster rate than espresso and it's certainly challenging when filter style coffee has come to be regarded as some sort of umbrella descriptor to all sorts of devices, appliances and methods - whether it's the portable and highly popular Aeropress, any of the modern and innovative drip/pour-over equipment, cold brew drip or immersion, hot brew, syphon or the trusty and reliable old-school systems bulk-brewing percolators/dripolators often used in event management or functions.

Until the market segments showed signs of evolving or maturing, it was always going to be risky to put filter styles out into the coffee loving public that already grapples with mastering consistent espresso.

Likewise, there has been a rather popular sport of "bashing or trashing" various company's filter style offerings as either insipid, sour, woody, grassy, under-developed roasts to ashy, burnt, roasty over-developed.

Overall, it seems as though few roasters, if any, actually hit the right spot for filter style as everyone has a different interpretation. When they did get it right, many obviously struggle to back it up consistently.

You see, filter is an emerging eco-system and whilst it's been around a long time, the true definitions of what makes a nice filter coffee are only just starting to surface. With anything new there will always be a lot of experimentation and so with filter coffees there is such an incredible variation that can be achieved in the cup.

Many people constantly tinker with filter brew recipes chasing a holy grail of sweetness, flavour and clean finish, others play around with grind and contact times, temperature, etc. but along with these variables there are also other factors such as suitability of the coffee (not all raw coffees are ideal for lighter filter brewing) and of course many roasters at some point become influenced by people shouting in their ears "lighter, lighter, lighter !". So, you guessed it.... targets often drift.

Our single biggest concern has been to ensure that our customers achieve the best possible experience from any of our coffees.

There are many scenarios where the wrong product may be purchased or the wrong brew or extraction is used and when you line up coffees that are roasted with 2 different profile objectives, so you can bet some wrong choices will be selected from time to time, despite warnings in the product description.

An example could be customers buying filter roasted coffees because they like the sound of the descriptors and not knowing that a filter roast may be difficult to use on espresso machines. Anyone that has tried to use light roasted coffee on an espresso machine will know exactly what I'm talking about here - there can be sour notes, a thin body and the flavours disappear in milk.

Another similar scenario is say a company placing an order for what they think are filter coffees intended for use in their Office Drip-o-lator, which is of course known, or thought of, as a filter coffee system in the old school.

Instead of tasting the typical bold, full flavours from a comparative espresso-style roast, they get something entirely different - a clean, light, thin, fruity and zesty liquor tasting remarkably different when milk and/or sugar is added. For many, this may pose a rude shock or be deemed unacceptable as a drinkable beverage.

You can easily see how a customer might raise a complaint because it's entirely unexpected and not what they are accustomed to drinking - so the initial starting position for such a scenario is to regard the coffee as defective, which is not accurate or correct, it was just that a wrong product was purchased (just like customers accidentally purchase ESE pod for their Nespresso capsule machines or vice-versa).

OK, so we have put enough warnings above and the good news for lovers of filter coffees - we have finally released a limited range of genuine special filter style coffees that are indeed light roasted.

Our filter roast is not attempting to pass as one of those deceptive "omni-roast" varieties that appear popular amongst coffee companies trying to please everyone. Well, if you see the term Omni-roast mentioned I would suggest you run a mile because it's the lazy way of trying to make one style of roast fit all.

 As we operate a large business roasting 20+ coffees each day, it's necessary to place some boundaries around the filter offerings to ensure we maintain our high quality standards and freshness.

The following list contains what we believe are important, sensible conditions and expectation.

  • Not all coffee beans are suitable for the lighter filter roast styles. The Filter Style coffees are a fixed list that changes often, sometimes on a weekly basis.
  • Coffees on our Filter list are different to our non-filter coffees and they are also more expensive both in terms of sourcing and production costs.
  • At any time, we are only roasting and holding a small level of stock for each of the filter coffees, therefore if the system shows the coffee as "back order", it means there is none available at the time you placed that order and it will be scheduled for the next filter roasting production, likely the following day.
  • Orders placed for in-stock and back-order items will ship when the full order is ready.
  • IMPORTANT - Filter coffees are not offered as "a la carte" roasting, e.g.  please don't send us requests asking to roast coffee X, Y and Z as filter roast, but lighter or darker when they are not currently on the Filter list. There is science, engineering and precision behind what we offer, it's not just fly by the seat of your pants.  
  • Turnaround time for filter coffees is slower than our current portfolio of super-fast same-day dispatch. If the filter coffee is showing as "back order" it will be roasted when the next production of filter coffees is run. Generally, this will be the following business day but could extend to 2 business days at certain periods when our schedules are over-loaded.
  • We have invested more than 8 months in the development of our filter coffee profiles and these are roasted on a smaller, dedicated platform. The coffees have been extensively tested to achieve the "best balance" across the wide spectrum of light roasted coffee brewing. It's not Nordic and it's not old-school US, it's a spot we think works.

Our list of filter coffees will start small with both a natural and washed Ethiopian Sidamo. No doubt this will expand quickly to include new micro-lots that we source.

If you can't see a coffee on the list, it means that the inventory for this roasted product has temporarily sold out.

Sidamo Washed delivers superbly clean notes of citrus and stone fruit with a lingering dark chocolate finish.

Sidamo Natural has incredible floral aromatics with a zesty black fruit berry zing.