The Starting Line is our experimental coffee series, built around ideas that do not fit neatly into the rest of what we roast. For the first release, we wanted to see what would happen if we treated blending less like a way to create consistency and more like a way to compose flavor.

Instead of starting with a traditional blend recipe, we worked with many of the same coffees in several different ways. Some were blended together before roasting, some were roasted separately and blended afterward, and several were roasted through wildly different profiles that we normally would not pursue for a single-origin release. We combined those more experimental roasts with the profiles we already know and love for these coffees, giving us multiple expressions of the same ingredients to work with in the final blend.

This approach gave us something a single roast profile or a traditional blend could not: more depth, more dimension, and more movement through the cup. Rather than asking one roast of each coffee to accomplish everything, we could use different expressions for different purposes. One might contribute florality and acidity, another sweetness and body, and another structure or finish.

The finished coffee is built from three main components, each contributing something different to the cup. One brings bright lemon candy and white florals. Another pushes the coffee toward lavender, jasmine, raspberry, mango, and caramel. The final component adds deeper sweetness, more weight, and a long finish that reminded us of walnut liqueur.

What interested us most was not simply getting all of those flavors into one coffee, but creating a cup that changes as you drink it. The aromatics are high and floral at the beginning, the fruit becomes more noticeable as the coffee cools, and the deeper sweetness continues to build underneath it.

Starting Line 001 was produced as a run of only 50 bags. Once this version is gone, it is gone. We do not plan to reproduce it, and because of the number of coffees, roast profiles, blend ratios, and timing involved, recreating it exactly would be nearly impossible anyway. Future Starting Line releases may use completely different coffees, processes, blends, roast profiles, or ideas depending on what we are interested in exploring at the time.

FLAVOR

Upon grinding, the aroma opens with white florals, citrus, and a distinctly perfumed sweetness. The first sips lean toward lemon candy and jasmine before opening into lavender, raspberry, ripe mango, and caramel as the coffee cools.

Underneath the brighter flavors is a deeper sweetness that gives the coffee weight and keeps it from feeling overly delicate. The finish is long and concentrated, with a walnut liqueur character that becomes more noticeable as the brighter fruit begins to fade.

We roasted Starting Line 001 on June 24 and intentionally held it for more than 55 days before release. Around the 40-day mark, the coffee began showing a dramatic increase in its high-end floral aromatics, with the lavender and jasmine becoming much more expressive than they were earlier in the resting period. Rather than releasing it as soon as it was technically ready to brew, we waited until the coffee had fully opened up.

For this release, aging is not an afterthought. It is part of the finished coffee.

COFFEE DETAILS

Release: Starting Line 001
Series: Experimental Limited Release
Production: 50 Bags
Style: Multi-Component Experimental Blend
Milk Compatibility: 1/3
Brewing Difficulty: 2/3, Moderate
Roast: Light / Light-Medium / Medium, using multiple roast profiles to create different expressions of the coffees within the finished blend.

ROAST APPROACH

This coffee was built very differently from one of our normal production blends.

Rather than choosing several coffees, developing one profile for each, and adjusting the blend percentages afterward, we treated roast profile itself as another ingredient. Some coffees were roasted on their own, while others were blended together before they ever entered the roaster. Several of the same coffees were then roasted through dramatically different profiles so we could create more than one expression from the same variety or coffee input.

Some of those profiles stayed close to the way we normally roast these coffees. Others intentionally went in directions we probably would not choose for a standalone release. A roast might exaggerate florality while giving up some balance on its own, or create more body and caramelized sweetness while muting some of the brighter characteristics. Individually, those roasts do not all need to be complete coffees. They only need to contribute something valuable to the finished composition.

That distinction changed the way we approached the entire project. Instead of asking whether every roast tasted perfect by itself, we started asking what role it could play once it became 10%, 20%, or 30% of something larger.

Only after roasting and tasting the different components did we begin working through the final blend. The recipe came from repeated cupping and adjustment, looking for a balance where the individual expressions remained noticeable without the cup feeling disconnected.

The goal was not maximum intensity from every component at once. We wanted progression: something bright and aromatic at the beginning, increasingly floral and fruit-driven through the middle, with enough sweetness, weight, and structure underneath it to carry a long finish.

FOR FANS OF

Highly aromatic coffees, florals that become more expressive as the cup cools, bright fruit backed by deeper sweetness, and coffees that reward slowing down and paying attention.

Starting Line 001 is also for people interested in the roasting side of coffee and in what becomes possible when blending is used as a creative tool rather than simply a way to make something taste the same from batch to batch. There is plenty of origin character here, but there is also a much larger imprint from the decisions made after the green coffee arrived at the roastery.

COMPONENTS

Starting Line 001 is built from three coffees, but because several of them appear across multiple roast profiles, the finished blend contains more expressions than the ingredient list might suggest.

28.4% Ethiopia Yirgacheffe
Fresh-harvest Ethiopian coffee used for the brighter, more aromatic side of the blend. It contributes lemon candy, white florals, jasmine, and some of the high-toned fruit that becomes more noticeable as the cup cools.

43.2% Flower Power
Our floral-focused Daterra coffee from Brazil. Flower Power appears in more than one roast component, allowing us to pull very different characteristics from the same coffee. Across the finished blend it contributes lavender, purple florals and clean/low-funk purple wine.

28.4% Brazil Peaberry
Used both alongside Flower Power and as its own roast component. The Peaberry gives the blend more weight, sweetness, texture, and depth, with the walnut liqueur character and long finish that anchors the brighter coffees. Slight fruity mango and creamy notes create more complexity.

Those coffees were then divided into three finished roast components:

Component 1: Ethiopia Yirgacheffe + Flower Power
Pre-blended before roasting and developed to emphasize bright citrus, white florals, and aromatic lift.

Component 2: Flower Power + Brazil Peaberry
Pre-blended before roasting and pushed through a very different profile, creating some of the strongest lavender, jasmine, and bitter characteristics in the final cup.

Component 3: Brazil Peaberry
Roasted separately to provide deeper sweetness, body, texture, and the long walnut liqueur-like finish underneath the brighter components.

The three finished roast components were then blended together after roasting. That means the final bag is not simply three coffees mixed together. The same coffees appear in different contexts and roast expressions throughout the blend, which is a large part of where Starting Line 001 gets its depth and dimension.

Size: 225g / 7.9oz Whole Bean