The Fields is the adventurous coffee that has been a key player in our forward-thinking desire for quality and innovation at the roastery. This coffee is a nod to our past as one of the pioneers in the London coffee scene and a representation of our position in Hackney.
As part of the adventure, The Fields offers us the chance to explore alternative approaches to processing, sustainability and experiment with some of our closest coffee growing partners. All of which results in unique flavours from some of our favourite producers around the world.
This summer marks the fifth consecutive year we have offered a coffee from the Las Lajas mill. Regularly recognised as an industry leader in honey and natural processing experiments, Las Lajas is one of only a handful of organic coffee producers in Costa Rica. Ultimately it is this environmental awareness and innovation that results in these incredibly unique tasting coffees.
Oscar and Francesca Chacon are third generation coffee producers and use their Las Lajas milling facility to process the coffees grown on their surrounding family farms. All of their coffees are carefully hand-picked and kept separate according to farm area, variety, day of picking and processing. The lot we have selected this year comes from the Caturra and Catuai trees of Finca Los Angeles and journeyed from ripe cherry to exported coffee via their Black Honey processing method.
In an effort to minimise their use of water the Las Lajas team produce only natural and honey processed coffees with the specific definitions of each term highlighting their attention to detail. In the case of their honey processes all lots are firstly depulped to separate beans from their cherries before being moved to raised drying beds with a sticky layer of mucilage still intact. No actual honey or flavour additives are used in coffee processing, rather, the colour naming of the process is determined by the frequency of rotation over the two week drying period. Black Honey lots are turned only once a day allowing the sticky mucilage to dry with the coffee into a darker colour. In contrast, their Yellow Honey coffees are raked almost hourly and result in a much lighter looking dried coffee. This choice of processing also affects the eventual flavour of roasted coffee with this Black Honey lot almost matching its appearance on the drying beds with a unique heft, stickiness and dark fruit flavours.
