Our Coffee
We select only 100% Specialty Grade Arabicas from single farms, estates & cooperatives, ethically sourced from growers around the globe. With each country’s season in mind we test roast and evaluate small batch samples, sniffing and slurping until we taste coffee we like. Building sustainable relationships enable us to get our hands on the very best coffees while ensuring that the quality-focused producers are rewarded for their hard work.
relationship coffee
As with everything we do at Extract, sourcing the highest quality green coffee requires a relationship built on mutual respect and a passion for quality. By buying from the same groups of growers year after year we help build an equitable and sustainable trading relationships where we always pay well above the fair trade minimum price for coffee.
picking the best
We roast specialty coffee, where coffee hunters seek the best of crop beans with distinctive flavour, properly prepared and shipped, from a producing country with the appropriate geographic and climatic conditions. This is usually only the top 2 to 3 per cent of coffee production with specialty grades found in Central and South America, the Caribbean, East Africa, India and Sumatra.
we roast our blends weekly to arrive fresh and remain true to the seasons.
Original Espresso
A star of the show and staple of our coffee lineup. This full bodied, chocolate, caramel, naturally sweet espresso has been with us since the very beginning and with us it will stay!
Here we blend Brazilian Daterra, El Salvador, Finca La Reforma 100% Red Bourbon and Hararghe District, Ethiopian, Longberry
Dr Strangelove Espresso
David’s ‘uncontrollable’ hand set out to cup, taste and create a 2 lot seasonal espresso that is bolder, more daring and fruitier in the cup. Excellent as espresso and nicely balanced in milk drinks too.
Dr Strangelove is 2 fantastic lots of coffee from 2 different origins, BRAZILIAN, FAZENDA RODOMUNHO & BOLIVIAN, FINCA VALENTIN and is always roasted whilst wearing the trademark glasses!
Strong Man Espresso
Release the strong man! Called Strong Man for a reason it’s built on a base of Ethiopian Harar and punches through milk for that all round sock in the Jaw! With a name like this you can expect a full bodied, true flat white espresso that sticks and is sure to lift to your Mo! OK Ok we will keep this one going for the fans of super natural!
Swiss Water Decaffeinated
No sock in the jaw here, so we’ve stuck a lazy cat on the bag of this 100% Brazilian Arabica with its caffeine removed by the Swiss water Method. This has been chosen for its cup quality as it delivers all the body, sweetness and subtle flavours you would find in a quality Brazilian, decaf or not.
Autumn Cafetiere
This blend offers up a medium bodied brew of our favourite chocolatey sweetness with subtle fruit notes. Bright in the cup, with great balance and mild acidity it’s a good one.
GROUND FOR CAFETIERE
Autumn Filter
This blend offers up a medium bodied brew of our favourite chocolatey sweetness with subtle fruit notes. Bright in the cup, with great balance and mild acidity it’s a good one.
GROUND FOR FILTER
here we feature new arrival single origin coffees we really like.
VALENTIN CHOQUEHUANCA - ORGANIC CERTIFIED
Valentin Choquehuanca, Organic Certified Typica, Caturra, Fully Washed/Machine Dried
A three-time Cup of Excellence finalist, Valentín Choquehuanca bought his farm in the small village of Loayza in 1990. The ten hecares of land – recommended to him by some friends – were already planted out with two hectares of coffee, to which Valentín added a further hectare of Caturra trees. The farm extends over steep, fertile hillside in Bolivia’s Caranavi region, north-east of La Paz, and is also planted with lime and mandarin trees.
Valentín, who is 35 years old, works the farm with the help of his wife. The coffee grows in the shade of indigenous ‘Inga’ trees and is fully organic certified. The whole farm totals some 10,000 coffee trees.
Harvest on the farm runs from June until September, when the ripe cherries are picked by hand. The coffee is fully washed at a local processing centre, and machine-dried until it reaches 12% humidity. It is then hand picked once again to remove any defects.
Valentín’s coffee took third place in the 2009 Cup of Excellence, and also reached the final in 2004 (9th place) and 2005 (15th).
In the Cup: We found this clean, bright, nutty, macedamia sweetness with some notes of papaya and tropical fruit. This is a good crop to cup coffee and we like it a lot.
FINCA LA REFORMA 100% RED BOURBON
Alvarez Family, 100% Red Bourbon, Fully Washed/Sun Dried
The Alvarez family has been growing coffee in El Salvador since 1889, when Rafael Alvarez Lalinde emigrated to the Santa Ana region from his native Colombia – bringing some coffee seeds with him. Four generations later the family own and manage a pair of small neighbouring farms on the fertile slopes of the Santa Ana volcano, one of which is Finca La Reforma.
This 36 hectare estate is planted out with 100% Bourbon coffee trees and benefits from excellent growing conditions, as well as scrupulous farm management. The Alvarez family’s hard work was recognised in the 2011 Cup of Excellence, when La Reforma was awarded third place in the competition final with a score of 91.72.
La Reforma’s coffee trees are shade grown under native shade species (at a density of around 50%), which enrich and conserve the soil and provide an important habitat for birds and other wildlife. The coffee cherries are hand-picked when fully ripe by pickers who have been trained to select only fully mature cherries.
The coffee is then processed in the family’s modern wet mill, sun dried on patios and stored in their purpose built facility. This allows the Alvarez family to manage the entire production process – with meticulous attention detail shown at every stage. The family and their staff are also skilled cuppers, and they regularly cup and re-cup their coffees to maintain quality.
The Alvarez family’s farms and mill offers considerable social support to local communities and have recently been working with the local NGO www.librasdeamor.org to help tackle child malnutrition in rural communities. The family is also committed to developing sustainable practices in order to protect and preserve the natural environment.
In the Cup: Well balanced, bright grape acidity. juicy, with floral, lime and exotic fruit notes. I particularly enjoy the brown sugar sweetness. Enjoy. DF.
FINCA EL PLATANILLO
Stuardo Coto Markus, 100% Maragogype, Wet processed
Finca El Platanillo is located on the slopes of the Tacana and Tajumulco volcanoes at an elevation of 1,060 to 1,460 metres. The farm covers an area of 368 hectares, of which 321 are planted with coffee.
The farm was bought in 1976 by Samuel Coto Escobar and is now managed by his son and daughter. Stuardo Coto Markus is the General Manager and Gladys Coto Markus de la Cerda manages the farm’s finances.
Maragogype is one of the so-called ‘heirloom’ varietals that are older plant types that were cultivated for flavour. Modern varietals, in contrast, tend to be optimised for yield, rather than taste. A Maragogype coffee bush may produce less than 1kg of green coffee a year whereas one of the newer high-yield hybrids varietals will easily produce three times as much.
Many of the maragogype coffees from Guatemala are a blend of several small lots which are sold to the mill and then bulked to create a larger lot. The maragogype that we buy from Finca El Platanillo is a true single estate maragogype. The result is a more consistent and high quality coffee season after season.
The beans are unique for their very large screen size and are often commonly referred to as ‘elephant beans’ (note that this should not be confused with the ‘elephant ear’ defect beans that are also selected out and then sold due to their unusual ‘hollow’ appearance and which may be from any Arabica varietal. The two are not the same!).
An elementary school was recently completed on the farm and this offers classes for the children of the farm workers and the broader community.
In The Cup: Beautifully balanced, medium body. We found delicate caramel,and grapefruit finish