Description
Coffee Flavour : Toffee, cocoa, dried apple
We offer coffee roasted in different forms that suits your favourite way of making coffee : If you would like your beans ground please order and add a note in checkout stating which form from the following
Delivery Times : To ensure all coffee is as fresh as you possible can get we do not stock ourselves, Ozone is based on the same estate as ourselves, if you order we will order and pick up, this may delay shipping your order by a day depending on when you order
Beans - Roasted and ready to be freshly ground by you, for those that like to take their time
French Press - Cafetiere - Fill and sit down ready when you are
Medium Filter - For the coffee machine enthusiasts who just need coffee always ready to go
Espresso - Roasted and ground for those that want or need a good punch of coffee
Coarse Filter - Jug The classic coffee drinker who like to brew up on the stove
Fine Filter - The finest grind possible
Coffee Information
Sticky, dark toffee up front, balanced by delicate dried apple and sultana, before shifting into a long cocoa aftertaste with a sprinkle of currants.
- Tasting notes: Toffee, cocoa, dried apple
- Process: Kenya-style Washed
- Varietal: Catuai, Typica, Chiang Mai
- Flavour Profile: Cocoa
- Roast: Medium to medium dark - A steady pace and make sure you don't go too light, as the flavours can easily be muted if so.
The Kenya-Style Washed Process - Explained
The Kenya-style washed method (also called double washed or double fermentation) is a multi-stage post-harvest process originally developed in Kenya and now widely used across East African specialty coffee. It's renowned for producing exceptionally clean, crisp cups with vibrant acidity, and it's significantly more labour-intensive than standard washed processing.
How the traditional process works:
After ripe cherries are hand-picked and sorted, they're mechanically depulped to remove the outer skin and most of the fruit flesh, leaving the coffee seeds still coated in a sticky layer of mucilage, the sugar-rich fruit residue that clings to the parchment.
In the traditional Kenyan method, the depulped beans are placed into fermentation tanks with minimal water for a first fermentation lasting 12 to 24 hours. This is the dry fermentation stage: the beans sit in their own mucilage without being submerged, and naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria begin breaking down the sugars and pectin in the fruit's own juices, without additional water.
The beans are then flushed through water channels, where agitation helps rinse and loosen mucilage. Low-density "floater" beans are separated at this point, one of several quality-sorting steps built into the process.
Next comes the wet fermentation. The beans are immersed in a second fermentation tank for another 12 to 24 hours, restarting fermentation but this time with less sugar and fruit material available. This underwater environment slows and homogenises fermentation, encouraging a cleaner, more uniform breakdown of the remaining mucilage.
Finally, there's a soaking stage. The washed beans are transferred to clean water tanks and soaked for an additional 24 hours. Since the mucilage has been fully removed by this point, enzyme activity within the bean itself increases during the soak. Historically, this final soak also had a practical origin: it allowed mills to hold washed coffee safely while freeing up drying space during busy harvest periods.
After soaking, the beans are spread on raised drying beds a couple of inches deep, initially dried quickly to reduce moisture and lower risk, then mounded deeper and moved to a longer, slower drying track to promote stability. The coffee needs constant turning during this period to achieve even drying, until moisture reaches around 11-12%.
Why this process matters for flavour:
Each stage serves a distinct purpose. The initial dry fermentation allows enzymes and microorganisms to break down the mucilage while producing organic acids and other metabolites that contribute to flavour complexity. During fermentation, the bean itself responds to external stress. The lack of oxygen during submersion (hypoxia) and the lack of water during drying (drought stress) both trigger metabolic changes within the seed, altering levels of sugars, amino acids, and organic acids that act as flavour precursors during roasting. The wet soak then adds refinement, producing what many describe as a softer body, more complex acidity, and greater cup clarity.
What Beanspire changed this harvest:
For this particular lot from Doi Pangkhon, the producers experimented by extending the dry fermentation stage while significantly reducing the wet fermentation and soaking phases. In previous years they'd followed the more traditional balance between the three stages.
This is a meaningful shift. Research has found that longer fermentation durations enhance the production of flavour precursors, particularly simple carbohydrates like glucose and fructose, amino acids, and organic acids like succinic acid, which drive more pronounced fruity and complex notes during roasting through the Maillard reaction. By keeping the beans in their own mucilage for longer during the dry stage, more of these flavour-developing compounds have time to develop and migrate into the seed. Reducing the subsequent wet and soaking stages then preserves that complexity rather than washing it back towards the cleaner, more neutral profile that a full-length soak would produce.
After fermentation, the coffee was dried on bamboo raised beds for a minimum of 14 days before being transferred to a lowland facility to complete drying more efficiently, an important step given the humidity levels at 1,250-1,450 metres in Chiang Rai during harvest season.
The result, according to Beanspire, is their most expressive and complex harvest in nine years of processing at Doi Pangkhon. A coffee that retains the signature cleanliness and structure of the Kenya-style method, but with greater depth and flavour intensity from the extended initial fermentation.
