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Our Unique Coffee Portfolio
Everything starts at the farm. And to give an outstanding farmer two things: Our commitment and a fair pricing for their hard work. These are the essentials, but of course a relationship goes beyond this.
We ask our farmers to slow down and to focus on improving their coffee qualities. For higher qualities, we pay more. We also promise not to go below the price we paid in the previous season. This is why a producer can rely on us and this is how we receive some of the best coffee beans in the world!
Enjoying our seasonally fresh offering means, that you will be able to discover the whole world of Single Origin Coffee Beans at their fullest flavour potential. We source coffee beans from around the world and roast them to perfection in our Berlin Roastery: by hand.
Our coffees will take you on a flavour journey with almost endless possibilities. With growing farm relationships, we can be an exclusive partner that engages in sustainability projects on and around each farm.
With growing stature of the producer, we also encourage new processing methods such as anaerobis or carbonic marceration. These innovative methods can enrich the final cup profile and make it more complex. As a result the coffee can score higher and fetch a higher price for the producer.
But the best thing is: You will have an outstanding coffee experience that you will aways remember!
Single Origin Quality
We are focusing solely on Single Origin Coffee for good reasons: They are the most focused way of experiencing the terroir that they grew on. They are also easier to use when it comes to grinding (evenly) and extracting (in a balanced way).
The most powerful reason though is: It makes our coffee producers proud because it connects you in the most direct way to their product! All our Single Origin Coffees score 86 points or higher. Bearing in mind that Specialty Coffee starts at 80 points, we take you into the level of microlots and high quality Specialty Coffee.
From 86 points you can taste 3 distinct flavour notes and acidity is present. Acidity is an important factor: It gives the beverage structure and it is transporting flavour. More acidity means higher quality.
All this said: We like to have a balanced and clean cup profile: When body, sweetness, flavour and acidity are working in harmony. Our beans are carefully sourced from farms that we trust closely work with on one eye-level. They encompass a diverse range of flavours.
By working directly with farms, we can enjoy the distinct characteristics found in coffee while offering a relationship that is financially sustainable.
Explore our World of Coffee
Different terroir, countries of origin, soil, processing methods, and coffee varietal create unique cup characteristics. We love it when a typical bean from Ethiopia finds its way to Colombia or Brazil and grows on different soil.
By different hands and with different climate. This is why we say that we are all still growing our knowledge in coffee. It keeps expanding! Coffee has more than 800 flavours: more than tea.
Roasting our beans light and bringing out all of the beautiful flavour notes and characteristics in each coffees bean: thats our craft. With more than a decade of roasting some of the best coffees out there under our belts, we feature coffee beans to suit any palate.
With our three signature taste categories: Balanced + Terroir + Exotic - you will have a clear indication of what your go-to flavour profile is. But coupled with the wast range within each category from all the factors mentioned before. Raw material that is fresh in season and roasted to perfection.
Our flavour categories will help guide you through the coffee beans in our portfolio. From Balanced favourites we could drink all day to our Terroir range that shows more distinct flavours of a particular region.
Our Exotic category is reserved for rare lots that highlight coffee beans with exceptional and unexpected flavour profiles. Selecting coffee is not a one-size-fits-all process, but we are here to help you find the coffee beans that suit you.
From Crop To Cup
From "Farm to Table" or from "Crop to Cup" is an expression that describes the short distance from producing to enjoying food and drinks. In our case it also means that we build close relationships to our coffee producers to ensure outstanding coffee bean qualities.
Keeping the value chain short means that we only include people that add value to the product. It usually is the coffee producer, the exporter (which can be the coffee farmer if they are larger)and us.
At THE BARN we have direct farm relationships but we mostly do not trade direct. We carefully chose our export partner in each country of origin. They have to have the right mind set to help our coffee producers on all levels: Teaching agronomy and farm techniques, supplying seedlings, machinery and to finance the farmer during the harvest season (with pre-payments).
In terms of processing at farm level: The complex process of growing our coffee beans requires keen attention to detail and respect for the environment. Within 2-3 years after planting, coffee trees start to bear fruit: the coffee cherries. Ripe cherries are being handpicked in several rounds, because they do not all ripen at the same time.
The reason is that in the flowering season (prior to bearing cherries), there are weeks between periods of rainfall which again create flowers on the coffee plants. So the handpicking of only the lush pink or juicy yellow coffee cherries is vital for our coffee taste: Only the ripe ones carry amazing flavours and higher sweetness.
Care and precision are the indispensable elements during the harvesting phase at the small scale farms we work with, the harvest process is done by hand to ensure that the delicate trees are not damaged, and the coffee cherries are picked at the perfect moment.
Capturing The Flavour: Our Roast Style
Our roast style is light. With years of perfecting our signature roast style, we know how develop our coffee beans from the inside: to bring out all taste properties and to make each individual coffee lot shine.
When we approach a new coffee, we spend time test-profiling and sample-roasting the beans to find out what each coffee tastes like. The art is not to change a coffee but to roast it in a careful way, so it can impress you with everything that it has.
Light roasting is healthier than dark roasting: We do not burn the outside of the coffee bean which we often compare with enjoying a perfect toast versus a burned one. One of the advantages of light roasting is that you can taste everything: good and bad. So we simply use the best beans we can find - there is no way of hiding lower qualities behind a veil of dark roast!
Light roasted beans are dry on the outside which is great: It means that the coffee oils are captured inside the bean only to be released when you grind and brew up your coffee. So always grind just before you extract coffee: Thats when you get the most intense flavour experience in your cup and onto your palate.
We are roasting all our coffee beans manually on Probat Retro Roast Machines that were tailor-made for us. They are based on 1950ies models (a very popular series often seen in Vintage Machines such as Probat UG22), however, they are newly built with modern engines and quality control functions to ensure consistent roast qualities.
Each of our coffees has an individual roast curve that we constantly review based on the daily feedback we receive from the awesome baristas in our own cafés: in Berlin, Dubai, Spain or Korea. This is rarely being done in roast companies: To take the feedback from the people working with the coffees on bar - and to feed it back into the quality control process of the roastery.
THE BARN COFFEE BEANS
FAQ
Are freshly roasted coffee beans important for your coffee?
First of all: The better the coffee beans - the better the cup of coffee. Thats easy! So, what are important factors to bear in mind when brewing a delicious cup of coffee? Freshness of coffee beans is certainly an major quality point.
Thats why we print the roast date (plus batch number) on the back of our bean bags. So, when are they are too old? Our guidance is that the best flavour experience is guaranteed in the first 3 months after roast date.
Given that you store the beans correctly (room temperature, sealed bag, no sunlight). Once the bag was opened, we recommend enjoying your beans within 10 days. Having said all this: Light roasted coffee degases slower than dark roasted coffee. Even though you may have surpassed the 3 months, your coffee will still taste a lot better than regular coffee you buy in the supermarkets.
Essentially, it never really goes bad. It just gets weaker in flavour expression. What are other major factors to brew the best cup of coffee: Number one has to be the water. It is more than 95% of the beverage.
Check out our water guide but make sure you have well-filtered water (without any added minerals, if you go for bottled). Secondly, the grind setting is crucial. The more we break the beaan into pieces, the more surface we offer the water for extraction.
Thats why espresso is very fine in grind (you only have around 30 seconds for extraction under high pressure).
And thats why the french press is so coarse (you have 4-5 minutes without any pressure during extraction). Other factors are: agitation and water temperature.
How do I choose my coffee?
As much as we love all our coffees: Taste is subjective. But we can guide you to make the right choices. Thats why you find the two main flavours of each coffee on the front label of the bag. We are adding a third piece: A tactile note.
You find words like: creamy, velvety or elegant - on our bags. They guide you with regards to the mouthfeel of each coffee. On our coffee cards (and on our webshop) we expand on the description of the cup profile plus we evaluate four key elements in each cup: On a scale from 1 to 10, we indicate the intensity of: balance, sweetness, body and acidity.
To make chosing your favourite coffee category super easy on our webshop, we have created 3 main flavour categories: Balanced. Terroir. Exotic. Our beans are sourced from coffee farms we trust, then roasted and shipped to ensure freshness and optimal flavour.
What is coffee processing?
Coffee processing happens at farm level. Processing takes place after the ripe coffee cherries are being picked. The two most common processing styles are wet (washed) or dry (natural).
Most of the times, the processing has its roots in the traditional way that coffee is being treated locally and culturally at origin. In Kenya, almost all coffees are being processed wet.
In Ethiopia we have a high ratio of dry processing. Access to water or traditional ways are leading reasons. In wet processing, cherries are being removed from the beans (with mechanical depulpers or water-pressure depulpers). After that, the coffee beans are placed overnight into water tanks. Fermentation takes places under water. After 24 hours (or more, depending on temperature and climate), a second wash may take place. After that, the beans are graded in Grading Channels, followed by further quality sorting and drying on raised African beds. Slow drying is important to ensure intact bean shells (to keep all flavours inside of the beans). Most of our coffee portfolio is now dry or naturally processed. In dry processing, the beans have very little contact with water: literally only at delivery point of the cherries, they are put into water buckets to remove floaters. Floaters are coffee cherries that may look ripe but are not fully ripe. Thats why they float. We remove them because they have lower qualities. The coffee beans are being dried on raised African beds and in cherry. It is important that the cherries are placed in thin layers and they need to be moved regularly. That way, we can create super clean cup profiles. We love naturally processed coffees not only because they are more environmental friendly. But they are also very aromatic, have high sweetness and very balanced acidity. With growing relationships and the quality development of our coffee producers, they engage in modern processing styles, such as anaerobics, honey, carbonic marceration and so on. With those methods, coffee producers have an opportunity to create additional flavour notes that may increase the scoring of the final cup. Innovative methods are also a great way of working around the challenges of climate change.
What is a coffee varietal?
Like in wine, we have different grapes in coffee. The varietal tree of arabica coffee keeps spreading: From heirloom and other natural varietals, coffee travelled with colonialism.
From there, new varietals were cross-bred to adjust to soil, increase yield or flavour or to pretect coffee from diseases. Sizes, hardness, density, sweetness, acidity and flavour characteristics vary massively and it is a joy not only to discover different varietals but also to try a varietal on different soil, processing or country of origin.
Some of our more advanced farm partners have varietal gardens where they experiment over many years, what varietal suits best their soil and climate. Based on that, they then look at processing to offer a vast range of flavour profiles, coming from the same farm and soil.
Do you offer decaf coffee beans?
Decaf Coffee undergoes a process that we find has two negative effects: It leaves a negative footprint in terms of environmental impact. It also takes away a lot of the exciting natural flavour profile of the coffee it once was.
While we are aware that new technologies can achieve less impact and improved cup profiles, there is still a wide gap between a decaf and a natural coffee. The good news is: There is a natural solution.
There are two varietals that naturally contain less caffeine: Laurina (0.2-0.4%) and Aramosa (0.5-0.7%). This compares with around 1.4-1.8% of caffeine that occurs in regular arabica coffee beans.
And compared to over 2.0% in robusta beans. We started our Low Caf program in 2018, offering those two varietals for those who are more sensitive to caffeine.
Mind you: Even Decaf Coffee has traces of caffeine. With our Low Caf you cut out a minimum of 50% of caffeine in your beverage. Whilst enjoying the whole world of natural coffee flavours.
Do you offer pre-ground coffee?
The simple answer is: No. And there is a good reason for that. Each bean is carefully treated ever since it was being removed from the protecting coffee cherry.
During fermentation, sorting and drying we make sure that the beans do not crack. For example from having too much heat on the drying beds.
Keeping the shell intact means that we keep all of the flavours and oils inside the coffee bean. We roast them slowly and gently so we can develop flavours, sweetness, acidity and body from inside the bean.
When we grind a coffee, we crack open this beautiful seed and from that moment, flavours and oils are exposed to oxygen. And from that moment, the flavour potential starts weakening. So the best coffee experience you can have is when you grind your beans just before brewing your coffee.
We strongly believe in that and we want to present our coffees in the best possible way to you. There is a second reason: In order to extract your coffee perfectly, you should adjust the grind setting to your method, machine, water and waterpressure.
This is best done by yourself at home, in the office or when you travel. We do offer great handgrinders that we recommend for perfect grind distribution. Grinding coffee beans right before brewing ensures a unique and flavourful coffee experience.
What is the best way to store coffee beans?
To keep your coffee beans fresh and full of flavour, it is essential to store them properly.
Our signature coffee bags have a one-way valve which ensures your coffee beans do not oxidise: only coffee gases exit the bag and no oxygen can come in.
Once you have opened the bag, use the zipper to close it after use. Store your coffee beans in a dry place and at room temperature. In case you prefer to put your beans into a jar or such, make sure its not glass or transparent.
Sunlight will make coffee beans age quicker. A perfect coffee jar has a vacuum function, such as the Atmos by Fellow. It is recommended to grind the beans just before brewing for the best coffee experience: The moment the coffee has been ground, it start losing flavours.
Essentially, the seed has been cracked so that the protected oils and the inside of the beautiful bean is exposed to oxygen.
Avoid storing coffee in the refrigerator or freezer, as these environments can introduce moisture and cause condensation on the coffee, potentially affecting the taste. If you still want to freeze your beans, do it in small quantities, so that when you defrost them, you enjoy them all the same day.
Do not freeze beans twice!
What should I consider when buying coffee beans online?
When purchasing our coffee beans online, follow our guidance so you will chose the perfect coffee for yourself.
Our bean collection is split between filter and espresso roasts. While we find these two roast styles important so you can easier chose based on your brewing method, there are many coffee fans that love our espresso roast on filter brewing methods and vice versa.
Both are light in style. The only difference is that the espresso roast has a slightly longer roast time and is roasted in a slightly larger machine. Which brings the body and sweetness to the forefront.
Our filter roasts are shorter and they highlight acidity and more delicate notes such as florals.
Are your coffee beans sustainable?
When we look at sustainability, we look at the environment and the coffee producer. The way we approach it, is this:
First we need to find a producer that is wants to adopt quality standards to produce better coffee. It requires a desire to change and to elevate processing techniques.
Those farmers are passionate and they want to know their roast partner. This is when we come in. If our goals align and if personalities match, we start a relationship.
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