As always, we’re absolutely stunned by both Sey’s green selection and their quality of roast. This coffee is a part of “Retro 1984”- a project seeking to bring back classic Kenyan SL profiles. The cup is what you’d expect from a project like that- juicy, sweet, and vibrant, everything you love about SL28.

Boiling water is almost always justified with Sey’s roast profile. This one, being a Kenyan coffee, is a bit more soluble than some of our other Sey’s features, so you can expect to grind slightly finer than what you may be used to with a Sey coffee, and for it to drain a little bit quicker.

Some of the most impressive cafes are the ones producing high quality, consistent beverages at a high volume, and that’s certainly the case for Maru’s arts district location. We knew that we needed to feature Maru’s coffee this month so that you can get a little taste at home of what they’re doing in their cafe.

We’ve had really great results using a lower-than normal brew temperature for this one. Temperature should be dropped lower than other coffees in the Roastful box- think close to 195-200.

We’ve also had really great results using low agitation pours- recommend using a Melodrip if available. We had our best results using the column dripper- and using MD pours outside of our first original bare kettle bloom pour.

Lastly for this one- the temptation is to grind a bit finer than normal because it’s so soluble. We didn’t find our best results grinding ultra fine- as a lot of the sparkly, pink bourbon-like-qualities started to fade in the background. Grinding slightly finer than normal may be justified, but grinding too fine may give you a heavier cup than what you’d want.

Kumquat’s roasting project Loquat is doing incredible things in the realm of roasting and green coffee. This coffee is super nostalgic, it reminds us of some of the Ethiopian coffees we fell in love with when we started drinking coffee.

Temp at 205 has worked well for this one- but similar to Maru, the finer we go the more vibrancy we’re losing on this one. Quicker brew times are ok for us with this coffee, as it tends to maintain a bit more acidity with these brews.