BLACK LABEL COMPETITION COFFEE SET

SET INCLUDES |  4 X 100G BAGS (SEE BELOW)

In the spirit of competition and this year's USBC 2023.  We are releasing all 4 competition coffees that we roasted here at Black & White Coffee for competitors, Anthony Ragler, Jake McFarland and Reef Bessette of The Coffee Movement.

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TAKE A SIP | GHALIB AL HAMMASHI

Origin | Wadi Seil Village, Haraz Area, Manakha, Sana'a, Yemen

Process | 96-hr Anaerobic Natural

Variety |  Ja'adi, Old Typica / Yemeni

Notes | red grape, spiced orange, dates, dark honey

Jake McFarland chose Ghalib's coffee for this year's 2023 USBC. 

From Jake - “I thought it was an amazing example of how excellent coffees can have wildly different profiles. I think we all like what we like in flavor profiles, but the coffee from Ghalib showed me that coffee can have a wildly different profile than what you’re expecting and still be absolutely complex and exceptional. When I tasted it, I had a flavor experience of, I think I know what coffee taste like, but just this coffee had flavor compounds in it that I’ve never experienced in a cup before and wanted to continue playing with and exploring.”

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TAKE A SIP | BRAYAN ALVEAR

Origin | Huila, Colombia

Process | Anaerobic Strawberry

Notes | strawberry, peaches, milk chocolate

Anthony Ragler chose Brayan's coffee for this year's 2023 USBC milk course. 

From Anthony - "When Shady from Forrest Coffee was visiting us, he talked about the work that they’re doing in Columbia with Co-Ferments. He spoke of this young man Brayan Alvear, who is a grower that provides a lot of the coffee that they use for their co-ferment lots. Bryan is only 19yrs old and his story resonated with my own story. It immediately brought me back to parallels of when I first got in the coffee as a teenager just trying to provide for my family. This Coffee is dehydrated strawberry and was phenomenal in milk. It tasted like a strawberry milkshake. It was so fun!"

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TAKE A SIP | MILTON MONROY GESHA CLOUDS

Origin | Tolima, Colombia

Process | Anaerobic Natural

Variety | Gesha

Notes | white flowers, pineapple, mango, white wine

Anthony Ragler chose Milton's coffee for this year's 2023 USBC espresso course.

From Anthony - “I wanted to step out of my comfort zone a little bit  so I chose a  Colombian geisha from Milton Monroy, who has provided some really great coffees for black and white through the years. It was  really fun having a new frame of reference of how to look at competition coffee. This coffee was the right brand of tropical for me. I’m pretty partial to tropical flavors like berries and red fruits but this one was really soft and had expressions of pineapple and mango, which intrigued me.”

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TAKE A SIP | LETTY BERMUDEZ

Origin | Cauca, Colombia

Producer | Diego Bermudez (Coffee named after his daughter)

Variety | Gesha

Process | Double fermentation thermal shock

Notes | ripe peach aroma leading to peach candy, fresh guava with a black tea finish.

Reef Bessette of The Coffee movement, chose Diego's coffee for this year's 2023 USBC. Reef also competed in the final round of USBC and placed 5th overall. 

From Reef - "The first time I tried Diego's coffee was his Castillo variety which blew me away with its extremely high sweetness and fruity complexity not typical from this variety. I knew right away he was doing something special with his processing. I reached out asking him for his best representation of his processing methods. Hands down it was his double fermented thermal shock Gesha named Letty Bermudez after his daughter. This coffee is one of the sweetest, most complex and easy drinking coffees I've ever tasted. If I I could only ever brew one coffee for the rest of my life it would be this one."

The first thing you should know about this coffee is: it's really special to us. Our retail manager, Jake McFarland, showcased this stunning Yemeni lot at the US Barista Championship in Portland last month, and he used the story of its producer to draw really poignant parallels between it and Jake's own lived experience, and among all of us who call ourselves human. 

MEET THE PRODUCER | Ghalib Al Hammashi lives in the Wadi Seil Village in Sana'a, Yemen, where he oversees a multi-generational coffee farm that's been in operation for over 300 years. Three centuries of family history, combined with the historical significance of Yemen as part of coffee's origin story in general, means that a big part of Ghalib's identity, story, and coffee is steeped in the past. For example, the coffee variety in this lot has historically been referred to as Mocha, a nod to the Yemeni port city of Mokha, famous for having made international coffee trade possible as far back at the 15th century! BUT. Ghalib's coffee is not only a product of the past; it is also an ode to the present of specialty coffee in general and to the future of Yemeni coffee in particular. By opting to process this lot in a way that breaks with Yemeni coffee tradition, Ghalib managed to bring together the old world and the new school of coffee, and the result is spectacular. 

TRUST THE PROCESS | Mocha variety coffees typically have very distinct flavors, such as apricot, dried fruit, and sandalwood. Working with Mocha Origins Coffee, Ghalib decided to break with traditional Yemeni processing methods and instead subjected this lot to 96 hours of anaerobic fermentation. The result is a coffee that maintains the spirit of its origins while simultaneously being elevated to a flavor experience worthy of the barista competition stage. This duality in the coffee is a point to which Jake regularly returned during his time on that stage, and we love the way he put it when he said, "Ghalib honored his past, but he didn't stay there. He chose to embrace a change that led to growth."

TAKE A SIP | By choosing to use an extended fermentation style much more common in places like Panama and Colombia, Ghalib has managed to produce a coffee that is both true to its terroir in flavor and brimming with vibrant acidity and well-rounded sweetness. When hot, this coffee has notes of black grape, black raspberry, dark rum, brown sugar, cinnamon, and Oud. As it approaches a pleasantly warm temperature, that vibrant acidity starts to ramp up, and new flavors of red raspberry, cooked peaches, and pineapple are introduced. At this temperature, the coffee still has a rum-like character, and here it melds with the brown sugar and cinnamon notes to give us something reminiscent of tiki spice. Finally, when cool, the big acidity remains while the flavors simplify, leaving us with a silky body, lots of sweetness, and non-descript red fruit notes. Meanwhile, those rum and spice notes prevail to the last sip. 

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Origin | Wadi Seil Village, Haraz Area, Manakha, Sana'a, Yemen

Producer | Ghalib Al Hammashi

Process | 96-hr Anaerobic Natural

Variety |  Ja'adi, Old Typica

Elevation | 1700-2240 masl

Meet the Producer | Coffee enthusiasts and barista competitors will likely need no introduction to at least one of the names on this remarkable black label release. Hacienda La Papaya is a renown farm in the Loja Province of Ecuador, famed for its coffees as well as for its owner, Juan Peña. Together, they are responsible for many of the innovative processes coming out of Ecuador today, as well as for bringing Ecuadorian coffee to the competition stage. Today's producer, Jaime Cartuche, has been employed and mentored by Juan Peña for over twelve years, and he currently works as the team leader for coffee processing at Hacienda La Papaya. A few years ago, with Juan's help, Jaime was able to purchase three acres of nearby land on which to manage his own farm, and this lot (which we purchased in its entirety!) comes from his third year of harvest. Today, Jaime works closely with his wife, Hilda, and three of his six kids (Erika, Darwin, and Boris) to operate the farm, and he remains eager to learn more about coffee and processing so that he can one day have "the best coffee in the region." Watch out, Juan Peña - your Padawan is off to a pretty promising start!

Trust the Process | Freshly harvested cherries are placed in spent rum barrels to ferment for five days in a closed, anaerobic environment. During this time, the coffee cherries are basically micro-managed, being kept in dark, temperature- and humidity-controlled rooms to to promote the movement of microorganisms and absorption of the aromas and flavors of the oak barrel in which they are kept. Afterward, the whole cherries spend 28-30 days in drying rooms, until optimal moisture content is achieved.

Take a Sip | So many descriptors were used as we discussed this coffee around the cupping table, it honestly got a little dizzying. Words like: intense, complex, vibrant, juicy, fruity, and beautiful, were all part of the conversation. Whew! It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the tasting notes get a little complicated (But, try to stay with us! It's a lovely journey.) When hot, this coffee shows off its darker side. It transitions quickly from flavors like pineapple and mixed gummy bears to those which are more saturated and dense and ripe, reminding us of raspberry liqueur, purple grapes, and red wine. At a pleasantly warm temperature, the cup shifts to something fresh, complex, and more acidic, with loads of fleshy yellow fruit notes, pineapple, and white wine. As the coffee cools, that now-vibrant acidity reminds us of fresh citrus, and the cup as a whole is boozy and complex. That gummy bear note is back for an encore, but this time it almost reminds us of the "drunken gummy bears" we once made in college - juicy, boozy, and delicious.

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Origin | Saraguro, Loja, Ecuador

Producer | Jaime Cartuche

Farm | Hacienda La Papaya

Process | Anaerobic Natural

Variety |  Typica

Elevation | 1800 masl