This week, we added a third component to our Sweet Tooth espresso blend: Baroida Estate, from Papua New Guinea.
It will join its usual components—Colombia (washed process) and Ethiopia (natural process)—, lifting up a notch the flavour intensity and body for a punchier and more expressive milk-based espresso drink.
Here’s a bit more background about this update.
We love this coffee on its own
Imported by Cofinet, it’s a washed process showcasing the Arusha, Bourbon, Mundo Novo, and Typica varieties. During one of our weekly coffee samples blind cuppings (samples of coffees that importers send us for potential future purchases), it caught our attention. It was delicious as a standalone single origin!
It complements Sweet Tooth’s original flavour profile, increasing body and intensity
It felt like a great addition to this espresso blend, pairing perfectly with its original components (Colombian washed, Ethiopian natural) to make the cup more punchy and memorable (while preserving the familiar qualities that Sweet Tooth drinkers love).
It showcases a delicious local coffee
OK, local may be a bit of a stretch, but it’s true that PNG is way closer to us than any other origins we work with. This lot proves that there’s more and more delicious ‘specialty grade’ coffee coming from there, and we’re excited to reflect this in our lineup—some origins every now and then, and as part of our blend components.
And if you’re thinking we’re doing it to save some bucks, think again: this green coffee costs as much as the other components
This is quite hard to summarise in two lines. Putting it roughly, big coffee players (like Ethiopia and Colombia) produce large volumes (more producers, more competition and more infrastructure), so market prices tend to be more competitive (lower or equal) than emerging countries with less production capacity or history (i.e. PNG).
Shipping-wise, sea freight is quite cost-effective, so even if distances covered by coffee from America or Africa are much bigger, it doesn’t impact the price that much to make great differences from coffee shipped from Central Asia.
For those of you who are keen to know more about traceability and transparency, we list all the info we get from our importers online, even for each blend component:
A screenshot of our current Sweet Tooth blend components, on its own webpage
A screenshot of Baroida Estate‘s webpage
So, we’re not reinventing Sweet Tooth. We’re just making it a bit tastier
And we hope you enjoy it even more than before! Let us know how you go—we always love hearing about your experience and feedback.