If you or someone you know would love to explore the world of coffee, this is the perfect gift. Inside are a range of premium, single origin beans, roasted here in Hong Kong. Inside are chocolatey beans, nutty beans, fruity beans, and three travel packs to take out on the road.
Like an Advent Calendar, the contents of each pack is (mostly) hidden, so you can write down your tasting notes, take a guess at which bean is which and then discover the results at the end!
Also included are some brewing recommendations for each pack.
Are looking for something experimental? These beans are the results of a trial by some enterprising coffee producers in Oromia, Ethiopia. The wine yeast and barrel flavours carry over into the beans and you can really smell it in the resulting cup. My days usually start with coffee and end with wine. This is my first experience with combining my two rituals together! The result? Surprisingly delicious.
A light roast highlights the sweet fruitiness of a fruity red wine with plum and raspberry
The Roaster’s Choice really enhances the deep red wine taste in this coffee. Full bodied, with rich black grapes, plum. Reminds us of an Australian Cabernet.
Dark roast is not available.
Right after roasting, coffee needs some time to chill for a minimum of three days. Our roasting cycle ensures that when you receive the beans, it’ll already have rested the minimum needed. However, the flavours will continue to improve over a time. How long? Well that depends on the roasting level you ordered.
Light: 7-9 days after roast date
Roaster’s Choice: 5-7 days after roast date
Dark: 3-5 days after roast date
But every bean and person is different so please experiment and find what works for you!
Unfortunately no. We would love to make your experience as convenient as possible, and while grinding your own beans is firmly in the mildly to very annoying category, we simply can’t do this for you.
The reason being, the second you grind your beans, you expose every nook and cranny to delicious coffee’s nemesis: oxygen. Too much oxygen and your coffee can go stale before you receive it in the post.
As delicious tasting coffee is our most important product we can’t take the risk of sending you a convenient but bland ground beans. Our best advice would be for you to buy a grinder.
This batch of red bourbon from El Ciprés was bought at auction. And you know what that means: truly excellent beans. Grown high up, above 1400m in Jejapa, El Salvadore. High elevation beans like these qualify as SHB (Strictly Hard Beans). Basically, "these beans struggled to grow in the cold mountains, resulting in concentrated flavours". Also, you know, they are hard (hope you have a good grinder!).
As with all beans in the Curious Collection, the flavours here are not your usual suspects of nuts and chocolate. Expect a nose of sweet mixed berries, Earl Grey tea and a silky smooth finish. The roaster's choice level will sacrifice a bit of the characteristic berry taste to mix in some seductive milk chocolate.
A light roast highlights the sweet fruit in this coffee, and balances with the additional complexity of Earl Grey Tea and a touch of chocolate.
Roaster’s Choice reduces the berries, instead bringing out more milk chocolate notes.
Dark roast brings out the nuts and preserves some of the apricot and tropical fruitiness.
The delightful sweetness of El Ciprés comes from its taste (duh) and also the effort they put into the land and people who grow it. As a Certified member of the Sustainable Agriculture Network and the Rainforest Alliance, El Ciprés is awesomely focused on producing coffee holistically.
El Ciprés family believes that by taking care of the land, the people who farm it, the natural wildlife and cool mountain waters, they will foster success. The farm has set aside 5 hectars of their property as protected forest. The other 90 hectars of land employ shade grown coffee techniques to protect the local flora and encourage native fauna. By selling their coffee at auction for high prices they are able to invest in the farmers who work the land by paying them fair wages and providing clean lodging for their families.
Learn more about El Ciprés and the Sustainable Agriculture Network by clicking below, but don’t forget to try the coffee!
El Ciprés Coffee | Café El Salvador
Sustainable Agriculture Network
Right after roasting, coffee needs some time to chill for a minimum of three days. Our roasting cycle ensures that when you receive the beans, it’ll already have rested the minimum needed. However, the flavours will continue to improve over a time. How long? Well that depends on the roasting level you ordered.
Light: 7-9 days after roast date
Roaster’s Choice: 5-7 days after roast date
Dark: 3-5 days after roast date
But every bean and person is different so please experiment and find what works for you!
Unfortunately no. We would love to make your experience as convenient as possible, and while grinding your own beans is firmly in the mildly to very annoying category, we simply can’t do this for you.
The reason being, the second you grind your beans, you expose every nook and cranny to delicious coffee’s nemesis: oxygen. Too much oxygen and your coffee can go stale before you receive it in the post.
As delicious tasting coffee is our most important product we can’t take the risk of sending you a convenient but bland ground beans. Our best advice would be for you to buy a grinder.
Over the past few years, Honduras has become one of the most popular origins of specialty coffee globally. It has set the standard for high-quality Arabica coffee from Central America.
Honduras stands out among its regional competitors with the unique flavour profile that distinguishes it from neighbouring countries like Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and El Salvador.
If you're looking to get into premium coffee and try out a region different from what you're used to, you've got to try this Honduran specialty coffee!
And if you're already a serious coffee hobbyist, Honduras El Pitarillo is one gourmet coffee you do not want to miss.
A light roast brings out a fine balance of tropical fruits like papaya and pineapple, along with the sharp taste of tamarind and sweet vanilla
Roaster’s Choice reduces the tropical acidity and brings out more sugar and vanilla flavours.
Dark roast brings out the nuts and preserves some of the apricot and tropical fruitiness.
In addition to holding a few of the world’s most well-known coffees, Central America is among the most diverse places on Earth, running from Mexico to Panama and sitting near the middle of the world’s equatorial zone. The region received the nickname “Bean Belt” because of its prime growing environment–and Honduras is a standout country producing excellent coffee.
The earliest Honduran plantations were in existence by the early 19th century, arriving from the Caribbean. Under Spanish rule, it had a decent following, but once the country gained independence, its popularity blossomed. By the early 2000s, coffee became an increasingly lucrative trade and a major agricultural export.
Due to lacking infrastructure in Honduras, producing quality coffee was initially difficult. Founded in 1970, the Honduran Institute of Coffee significantly improved the quality of the product through coffee-tasting laboratories for its farmers.
Today, thousands of small, independently operated farms employ millions of workers throughout the booming coffee harvesting and processing season. One of these farms is El Pitarrillo, owned and operated by Miguel Angel Paz.
The El Pitarrillo coffee farm receives its name based on the area of Corquin where it is located. At an elevation of 1250 meters, the farm encompasses 7 hectares, primarily covered in coffee fields. Miguel has owned the farm for over 20 years, planting several varietals to find and compare the most high-quality beans available. Although he mainly cultivates Catuai, he also has rust-resistant breeds: Obata, Icatu, and Lempira.
Once the El Pitarrillo farmers pick the cherries, they are floated and washed before pulping and fermenting overnight. Then, they dry on raised beds for 8 to 15 days, depending on the weather. The result? An exceptional cup of gourmet coffee with a whopping cup score of 87.
The Specialty Coffee Association developed the coffee tasting and scoring methodology known as cupping. Certified samplers with intensive training, called Q-graders, expertly assess the beans, and score them between 0-100. Most commercial-grade coffees receive a score between 60-80. Those scoring above an 80 can don the coveted “specialty coffee” badge, and almost nothing gets a score above 90.
Honduras El Pitarillo coffee has a cup score of 87. It bears repeating because it’s wildly impressive.
These high-quality beans produce an incredibly unique flavour. Tasting notes include papaya and pineapple with muscovado sugar, tamarind, dark chocolate, and vanilla finish.
Because of its crave-worthy flavour profile, the expert roasters at Bean Curious will never roast this premium coffee dark. Why? Because it would kill all the sought-after flavours.
Right after roasting, coffee needs some time to chill for a minimum of three days. Our roasting cycle ensures that when you receive the beans, it’ll already have rested the minimum needed. However, the flavours will continue to improve over a time. How long? Well that depends on the roasting level you ordered.
Light: 7-9 days after roast date
Roaster’s Choice: 5-7 days after roast date
Dark: 3-5 days after roast date
But every bean and person is different so please experiment and find what works for you!
Unfortunately no. We would love to make your experience as convenient as possible, and while grinding your own beans is firmly in the mildly to very annoying category, we simply can’t do this for you.
The reason being, the second you grind your beans, you expose every nook and cranny to delicious coffee’s nemesis: oxygen. Too much oxygen and your coffee can go stale before you receive it in the post.
As delicious tasting coffee is our most important product we can’t take the risk of sending you a convenient but bland ground beans. Our best advice would be for you to buy a grinder.
We’re so excited to introduce you to Bufcoffee Ltd, a women-led coffee company in Rwanda’s Southern Province. We recently purchased these beans at auction, and were so thrilled with the incredible bean quality and flavor, it was love at first sip!
But it’s not just the beans that are amazing, it's the company too; and Epiphane, the woman who created Bufcoffee, is truly inspirational. We can’t wait for you to try this incredible, high-end coffee
A light roast brings out the strong notes of tropical fruit, apricot and champagne aroma. Strikingly crisp and complex.
Roaster’s Choice reduces the tropical acidity and balances it with additional sugars and nut flavours.
Dark roast brings out the nuts and preserves some of the apricot and tropical fruitiness.
Bufcoffee is one of those companies that you just can’t help falling in love with. Epiphanie Mukashyaka founded Bufcoffee in 2003 because she was passionate about coffee, and she wanted to help lift others in her community who needed a helping hand. As a widow of seven children, Epiphanie knows a thing or two about perseverance – and about neighbors helping neighbors.
In order to follow her dream of bringing high-quality coffee production to her community, Epiphanie learned everything she could about the coffee trade, went through tons of training on all levels of fully washed coffee production and quality control, and quickly achieved something amazing: she became one of the region’s only female coffee producers!
But Epiphanie didn’t stop there, she shared her company’s success with her community by providing water sanitary systems, health insurance for the farmers, and generally improving living standards. They’ve even built a local school!
From the moment you open a bag of Bufcoffee coffee beans and smell the wonderful aromas, you know you’re getting a world-class coffee. The beans are also Rainforest Alliance certified, by the way.
Bufcoffee beans are grown in the Nyamagabe District, part of the Southern Province of Rwanda. The coffee bean trees are located in areas with an elevation of between 1,920 – 2,100 meters, and it’s this high elevation that gives the beans their crisp, complex flavor. Trust us when we say, there’s something special about these beans.
You see, growing coffee plants at higher elevations stresses the bushes, which results in a smaller yield of beans. The benefit to growing coffee fruit in conditions like this is that the beans that are produced have a more concentrated flavor, and a harder exterior – both desirable qualities in high-end coffee beans.
To understand this process better, think of the way stress impacts grape vines. The older the plant, the more the roots must fight for water, and the more stressed they become. Stressed vines produce fewer grapes, but the grapes that are produced are prized for their unique flavor.
If you’re like us, and you love a good pour-over coffee, you’re going to want to try this coffee ASAP. There’s just so much happening in the cup: yellow plum, apricot, champagne, cashew, pineapple and cane sugar flavors. And, on top of that, the acidity is well-structured and kind of tropical.
Sipping this ultra high-end coffee is truly delightful because the flavors just keep unfolding. It really is one of the most interesting beans we carry.
Cupping is a system used to taste, evaluate and grade coffee, similar to, but not completely the same as a wine rating system. Aroma, flavor, body, acidity, and balance are all graded to give a coffee its cupping score.
Scores of 80 points are incredibly difficult to achieve. Coffees rated over 80 are considered specialty coffees, i.e.: the best of the best, and any coffee that approaches or surpasses 90 points is considered out-of-this-world good.
The Bufcoffee cupping score is an incredible 86.5. In other words, this is a coffee you’re going to want to tell all of your coffee-loving friends about.
Right after roasting, coffee needs some time to chill for a minimum of three days. Our roasting cycle ensures that when you receive the beans, it’ll already have rested the minimum needed. However, the flavours will continue to improve over a time. How long? Well that depends on the roasting level you ordered.
Light: 7-9 days after roast date
Roaster’s Choice: 5-7 days after roast date
Dark: 3-5 days after roast date
But every bean and person is different so please experiment and find what works for you!
Unfortunately no. We would love to make your experience as convenient as possible, and while grinding your own beans is firmly in the mildly to very annoying category, we simply can’t do this for you.
The reason being, the second you grind your beans, you expose every nook and cranny to delicious coffee’s nemesis: oxygen. Too much oxygen and your coffee can go stale before you receive it in the post.
As delicious tasting coffee is our most important product we can’t take the risk of sending you a convenient but bland ground beans. Our best advice would be for you to buy a grinder.
Flavour Profile
Our specialty coffees are of very limited supply and like a vintage champagne, only sold in the best years. Once out of stock we may never feature it again. Also as the flavours of these coffees may be delicate, we may omit certain roast levels.
The light roast is a beautiful balance of berries, lemons and floral notes. Basically the coffee version of a good Burgundy.
Roasted a light medium lowers the acidity and makes the berries taste a bit riper against a backdrop of dried lemon peel.
We won’t roast this coffee to this level as everything that makes it special will just go up in smoke.
There’s Yirgacheffe: the highly prized Ethiopian coffee that coffee connoisseurs rave about for it’s delicate acidity and vibrant florals, and then there’s OCR Yirgacheffe. OCR stands for “Operation Cherry Red” which is the brainchild of Trabocca Coffee Importers.
Trabocca coffee felt that Ethiopian coffee was good, but that with proper motivation it could be truly excellent. So they created an incentive program intended to propel coffee farmers of the region to the upper echelons of the coffee world. The OCR program asks each farm to submit micro-lots of 1,500 to 3,000kg of only their best, ripest, deepest “cherry red” coffee possible.
These coffee cherries are hand-picked fully ripe cherries, carefully sorted and processed to bring out the best flavours each farmer is capable of. Each of these premium coffee lots are then sent to auction where enthusiastic roasters and drinkers taste and bid up the prices of the choicest lots. In return for their care and dedication to making top-quality coffee the prices fetched are auction are then returned directly to the farmers so that they can improve their quality of life, equipment and motivation to create even better coffee next year.
From the OCR program comes this coffee from Misty Valley. A prime example of what happens when you put an enormous amount of care into your plants: crystal clear fruitiness, complexity, and unique character. Misty Valley Yirgacheffe is perfumed, light and has a lingering berry finish that will stay with you all day.
Right after roasting, coffee needs some time to chill for a minimum of three days. Our roasting cycle ensures that when you receive the beans, it’ll already have rested the minimum needed. However, the flavours will continue to improve over a time. How long? Well that depends on the roasting level you ordered.
Light: 7-9 days after roast date
Roaster’s Choice: 5-7 days after roast date
Dark: 3-5 days after roast date
But every bean and person is different so please experiment and find what works for you!
Unfortunately no. We would love to make your experience as convenient as possible, and while grinding your own beans is firmly in the mildly to very annoying category, we simply can’t do this for you.
The reason being, the second you grind your beans, you expose every nook and cranny to delicious coffee’s nemesis: oxygen. Too much oxygen and your coffee can go stale before you receive it in the post.
As delicious tasting coffee is our most important product we can’t take the risk of sending you a convenient but bland ground beans. Our best advice would be for you to buy a grinder.