Summer Solstice - Daterra Collection





Summer Solstice - Daterra Collection
Bright, radiant, and full of life, like a long drive with the windows down in the middle of summer.
This is what sunshine tastes like in a cup. No shortcuts, no additives, just slow-grown sweetness and fruit-driven clarity that make you want to linger between sips.
If The Classic is your dependable daily driver, Summer Solstice is the same engine tuned for adventure. Still smooth and structured but bursting with clean fruity vibrance and honeyed sweetness. It shows a diverse flavor profile of what one farm is capable of producing.
While many naturals aim for boldness alone, this green hits 88 on the coffee grading scale, a mark of exceptional clarity (a very “clean natural” in our opinion), balance, and sweetness. It proves that brightness, complexity, depth and dimension can coexist when a coffee is grown and processed with purpose. Any coffee that offers these 4 traits is a massive win in our book!
Grown at Daterra Estate in Brazil, a pioneering farm known for its sustainability and innovation, this coffee embodies the same care and intentionality that define their name. Daterra has earned global recognition for both quality and environmental stewardship, including:
Rainforest Alliance Level A Certification (the highest tier)
Cup of Excellence accolades from the Brazil Specialty Coffee Association
Carbon-negative status achieved through regenerative farming and agroforestry systems
Summer Solstice is a testament to that spirit of innovation. Its cherries are left to dry naturally on the tree, a slow and patient process that lets the fruit absorb the full warmth of the Brazilian sun. It’s actually one of the only climates that this is possible in since many countries experience heavy rains come harvest in which the cherries need to be removed. Using advanced mechanical selection and post-harvest sorting, Daterra isolates only the most flavorful, fruit-rich beans, then finishes them on patios and in drum dryers for consistent sweetness and structure.
Flavor: This specific selection of Summer Solstice that we purchased has new varieties that make its flavor notes stand out even more compared to other versions of the same harvest! Expect intense berry jam notes from the dry aroma - a clear sign of a wonderful coffee. First sip gives way to a luscious berry jam that fully coats the palate. A mixture of purple and darker-toned colors come through. Grapes, strawberry, blackberry, tropical fruits, and a lingering honey sweetness. It’s like eating the berry-topping compote from Costco’s Very Berry Sundae!
Roast: Slightly beyond very light. A quick first crack of ~42 seconds and a 10 degree increase before drop, we found slightly underripe strawberries and a bright fruity tartness that will taste beautiful when aged and is also bit trickier to extract efficiently. By pushing the first crack time of the roast a few seconds longer and going into the start of FC with more heat and slightly less airflow, along with ending the roast a couple more degrees darker, we achieve a well-developed coffee bursting with sweetness, texture, and ripe fruits!
We have roasted this coffee on many machines over the months and have found this coffee to be incredibly high density for its processing and it is hard to roast lightly without adding an incredible amount of heat due to the bean density and the bean size/shape. With some finesse, we’ve made it happen!
Varietal: Paraíso, Yellow Catuaí, Arara
Process: Natural (dried on tree)
Green Score: 88
Harvest: Mid 2024
Drying: Tree + Patio + Drum Dryer
Storage: Nitrogen-flushed, vacuum-sealed green coffee—harvested twice annually for peak freshness.
Not included: the open road, the hum of an old engine, and that easy kind of joy that only happens when the sun’s on your face and time slows down.