Bourbon Barrel Aged Coffee — Guatemalan Single Origin, 30 Days

Roast: Medium  |  Base: Guatemalan single origin  |  Aged: 30 days in a bourbon barrel

This one takes a month longer to make than anything else we sell.

Green Guatemalan coffee — unroasted, still raw — goes into a used bourbon barrel and sits there for thirty days. Green coffee is porous and remarkably absorbent, so it draws in what the oak and the spirit left behind: vanilla, caramel, char, and that particular sweetness bourbon barrels give up slowly. The beans are turned through the ageing so they take it on evenly.

Only then does it get roasted — to order, like everything else here.

The result is a cup that smells like a bourbon barrel and tastes like coffee that has been somewhere. Deep aromatics, oak and vanilla through the middle, and a long warm finish. There is no alcohol in the finished coffee — the barrel contributes aroma and flavour compounds, not spirit.

The Guatemalan underneath is worth knowing about too: four hundred family farms in Huehuetenango, most cultivating about two acres intercropped with the corn and beans they eat. Read their story here.

Brew it: French press or pour-over, black, the first time. This is not a coffee to put milk in until you know what it tastes like.

Pairs with: a fire, a late hour, and a book you've read before.