Our Story
A five-chapter account of how we turned fermentation into a craft — and why the cup in your hand is never quite like anyone else's.
My first anaerobic coffee was on a café terrace in Paris — an Ethiopia from Sidama, fermented 72 hours without oxygen. It tasted like ripe fruit. Nothing like the coffee I knew.
For years it was my morning. Then I moved to New York and couldn't find anything close. What I did find was usually too wild to enjoy, different in every batch, or sold with more marketing than information.
So I started making the coffee I couldn't buy. — Alex, founder
I'm a data scientist; I spend my days tuning variables. Coffee obsesses over origin and altitude but leaves fermentation — the variable that changes the cup most — to chance. So I went looking for the producers who don't. The wild lots I tasted along the way set the standard: controlled, not funky. Consistent, not lucky. Specific, not vague.
Anaerobic is the coffee I couldn't buy. Sealed environments, measured hours, named variables — a cup that tastes like the fruit it came from.
Anaerobic fermentation, done well, is a deliberate act. Cherries are sealed inside oxygen-free environments and held there — 48 hours, 96, 132 — while temperature, humidity and time are measured as carefully as any chemistry experiment. We have tasted lots held for 30 days. Think of it the way a winemaker thinks of maceration: an interval during which flavor is not merely preserved but built. The environment does nothing on its own. The producer does — and we choose the ones who do it best.
Which is easy to say. So here is every coffee we sell, on the same clock, with the steps written by the people who processed them.
Uganda · East Mt. Elgon · SL14 · SL28 · Nyasaland · 1,400–2,000 m · Norman Mukuru
Chocolate · Banana flambé · Coconut
SL14, SL28 and Nyasaland red cherries are carefully picked, wet and hand-sorted, then graded.
Whole cherries are sealed for a 48-hour low-oxygen fermentation, to increase cup depth and complexity.
Slowly dried on raised beds, with careful shade control.
Cherries and beans are separated through milling.
Selected beans are roasted with precision to unlock their unique flavour characteristics.
Uganda · East Mt. Elgon · SL14 · SL28 · Nyasaland · 1,400–2,000 m · Norman Mukuru
Guava · Peach · Magnolia · Pear · Port wine
SL14, SL28 and Nyasaland red cherries are carefully picked, wet and hand-sorted, then graded.
Whole cherries go under a slow, sealed, oxygen-free fermentation for 96 hours.
Slowly dried on raised beds, with careful shade control.
Cherries and beans are separated through milling.
Selected beans are roasted with precision to unlock their unique flavour characteristics.
Ethiopia · Arbegona, Sidama · 74158 Heirloom G1 · 2,230 m · Mulugeta Muntasha · Dawencho station
Papaya · Strawberry wine · Watermelon · Tea
600 smallholders around Arbegona station deliver coffee cherries at peak ripeness of this indigenous, naturally evolved varietal.
Coffee cherries are carefully fermented in sealed, oxygen-free tanks to enhance the fruit flavours.
Beans are slowly sun-dried on beds above 2,300 m.
Selected beans are roasted with precision to unlock these beans’ unique flavour characteristics.
Ethiopia · Arbegona, Sidama · 74158 Heirloom G1 · 2,300–2,400 m · Mulugeta Muntasha · Dawencho station
Apricot · Lime · Raspberry · Honeysuckle
600 smallholders around Arbegona station deliver ripe coffee cherries.
Coffee cherries are carefully depulped, fermented and washed clean.
Beans are sun-dried slowly on beds above 2,300 m.
Selected beans are roasted with precision to unlock their unique flavour characteristics.
Colombia · Fresno, Tolima · Papayo · 1,500 m · Bayter · El Vergel Estate
Strawberry · Mango · Chocolate · Pineapple
Careful selection at peak ripeness of Papayo coffee cherries, a rare and exceptional varietal.
A 4-hour aerobic pre-fermentation phase, to enhance the coffee’s natural fruity and tropical notes.
96-hour anaerobic fermentation in hermetic tanks, with humidity held at 22–25% for a slow and even fermentation.
A controlled 76-hour mechanical drying process, to lock in the integrity of the varietal’s exotic notes.
Beans rest 30 days in GrainPro before milling, so moisture equalises through the bean.
Selected beans are roasted with precision to unlock their unique flavour characteristics.
Colombia · Pitalito, Huila · Caturra · 1,750–1,950 m · Hernández family, Finca Los Nogales
Tropical fruit · Banana · Rose · Tangerine
Ripe cherries are picked and sorted by density.
A thermal shock treatment at 80 °C for 20 seconds is applied, to open the pores and release the sugars.
Cherries are fermented in oxygen-free sealed tanks for 96 hours, with a coffee-cherry fermentation starter liquid saved from a previous lot.
Drying takes 2 to 4 days; beans are separated and then rest 15 days before leaving the farm.
Selected beans are roasted with precision to unlock their unique flavour characteristics.
Colombia · Manzanares, Caldas · Caturra · 1,800 m · Reforest Project · processed at El Vergel
Cocoa · Cherry · Blueberry · Green apple
Caturra cherries, renowned for their complex flavour potential, are meticulously selected.
A first 36-hour anaerobic pre-fermentation enhances the development of fruity and tropical notes.
Cherries are fermented for 96 hours in oxygen-free tanks at 23 °C, to build sweetness, acidity and complexity.
Dried for 7 days, to reach 22% humidity.
Beans are separated and rested for 30 days, to 10.5% moisture, for the flavours to settle.
Selected beans are roasted with precision to unlock their unique flavour characteristics.
The scale stops at 132 hours because that is the longest ferment on our shelf today — not because fermentation stops there. Extended lots run to 200 and 300 hours; we have tasted coffee held for 30 days. Length is a choice, and it is the producer’s.
Read down the bars and the argument makes itself. The two Uganda lots are the same cherry from the same station, picked and sorted the same way, dried the same way — one sealed for 48 hours and one for 96. Only the second step differs, and one tastes of chocolate and coconut while the other tastes of guava and mulled wine. The Ethiopian pair goes further still: one bar is empty, because that coffee was never sealed at all. Same varietal, same hands, same hillside — washed instead of fermented, and on the shelf beside its own twin so you can taste what the seal did.
The takeaway. Fermentation is not a step. It is the craft. Everything after — the roast, the grind, your pour — is us trying not to ruin it.
The environment does nothing on its own. The producer does.
Every lot on our shelf is the work of someone whose name belongs on the bag — and usually isn't. Fermentation, more than any other stage, is decided at origin. What follows is a beginning.
Uganda · Mt. Elgon
An agronomical engineer from the far west, he came east to build processing for one of Uganda's largest exporters — then stayed to build his own. Four community stations, around 300 registered smallholders, on some of Mt. Elgon's highest ground.
Ethiopia · Bursa, Sidama
He grew up in Bursa when Bursa grew no coffee, and learned the trade driving cherry trucks in Arsi. He came home in 2021 to build Dawencho station, just as the village planted its first trees. Within two years, four of Ethiopia's top-ten Cup of Excellence lots came off his drying beds — including the national winner.
Colombia · Pitalito, Huila
“Preserving the native microorganisms from this pre-fermentation dough is the farm's secret to a distinctive flavour profile.”
Fourth generation on Los Nogales, running it since 2013 — trained in environmental management, treating the farm as a working laboratory. Their coffee took first place in Colombia's Cup of Excellence in 2005.
Three of the people whose names belong on the bag. We print the farm, the variety, the altitude and the fermentation window on every bag — because the people behind the cup are the story, and a bag without a name is just a commodity in a better-looking jacket.
Anaerobic processing does something measurable. Under low-oxygen conditions, the yeast and bacteria on the cherry produce volatile compounds that simply do not form in conventional fermentation — more than forty new ones, according to peer-reviewed gas-chromatography work.
1That is not marketing. That is a lab instrument. The diagram below groups those compounds into six sensory families — red fruit, floral, tropical, caramel, vinous, spice — each responsible for a specific kind of note you may have read on a tasting card without knowing where it came from.
¹ Volatile profiles under controlled-anaerobic conditions are documented across multiple peer-reviewed gas-chromatography studies of Coffea arabica post-harvest. Compound counts vary with varietal, altitude, vessel design and hold-time; "forty new" refers to compounds elevated to sensory-threshold concentrations in anaerobic lots versus washed controls.
If you want to go further
Forty-plus compounds, nameable in a lab, identifiable in a cup.
The bag lands on your doorstep in a box that weighs nothing and smells of almost nothing — which is, for coffee this fresh, the first small signal that something has been done differently.
You cut the seal. The room changes. Somewhere behind stone fruit, there is cocoa; behind the cocoa, something closer to port. You grind. You pour. You wait the minute it takes for the bloom to settle. And then, for thirty seconds, you are drinking the specific ninety-six hours that a sealed environment in Sidama or Huila spent under somebody's careful attention — coffee, closer to the fruit it came from than you knew it could be — funnelled now into a cup the size of your two hands.
Most mornings do not feel like this. That is fine. We only need them to feel like it sometimes.
Grind medium-coarse.
The flavor wants room to breathe. Medium-coarse for a V60; a little coarser for a Chemex.
Bloom 45 seconds.
Twice the grounds' weight in water, just off the boil. Let the CO₂ leave. Wait it out.
Pour slow.
1:15 ratio, three pours, three minutes total. Taste the difference a calm hand makes.
Grind fine; dose 18–20 g.
Distribute evenly in the basket, then tamp level with about thirty pounds of pressure — the same cup to cup. Lighter roasts are denser; start at 18 g, push to 20 g for the lightest lots.
Pre-infuse low, then ramp.
Four seconds at two bar before full nine-bar extraction. Anaerobic lots reward a gentler flow profile — controlled pressure unlocks the fruit.
Pull 1:2 to 1:3 in 25–30 seconds.
Lighter roasts open up at a 1:3 ratio (18 g in → 54 g out); medium roasts shine at 1:2 (18 g → 36 g). If it runs fast, grind finer. If it chokes, open up.
Grind coarse.
Coarser than a V60. Fine sediment muddies the cup and dulls the fruit we spent ninety-six hours building.
Steep four minutes.
1:16 ratio; stir once at 30 seconds; break the crust at four minutes and skim the foam.
Press, then decant.
Press slowly. Pour every drop into a second vessel — leaving the grounds to continue extracting only dulls things.
End of story
If you want to taste what engineering sounds like — we're here.
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