this is a coffee i haven’t heard anyone rave about, and perhaps under that influence i had never bothered to seek it out. however a couple of weeks ago i was given a small quantity to try.

i didnt realise quite how small a quantity until i came to roast it last week & discovered i didnt have enough to satisfy even the test roaster, so i decided to make up the balance with some costa rican. as luck would have it, this resulted in proportions of almost exactly 2/3 Skyberry & 1/3 Costa Rican. accordingly i only had one shot at getting the roast even close to right.

anyway, in my haste to visit a guy in brighton yesterday i threw it into a case with an array of other coffees. at some point in the proceedings yesterday afternoon we found the Skyberry – Costa blend in the pile & thought, why not?

my host was not overly impressed, consistent with the predominant view of the Skyberry in the market, the comment being ‘i think it dilutes the costa rican, but i am not sure what it brings to the cup in return’. whilst i can follow this line of reasoning as it is consistent with a traditional approach to blending (i.e. what does coffee ‘X’ bring to the cup) i approach it from a slightly different angle.

for example, the guy i was with enjoys very distinctive, you might even say ‘extreme’ (he would say ‘interesting’ roasts). for example he enjoys a cup of ethiopian harrar as a single origin, single shot, espresso whereas i find the harrar brutal, at least as an espresso. please note there are no rights & wrongs here. it is simply a matter of taste & personal preference, like wine. it is not a maths equation with one objectively correct answer we are trying to solve.

the point is that while my host would label the skyberry as ‘bland’ or ‘insipid’, and lets be clear it would have been even more so if it had not been for the presence of the costa rican, i would describe it as delicate & creamy.

in my coffee spectrum i would place it to the left(i.e. more delicate) of the mexican coffee of which i am very fond, & yes i expect many would label this as bland or insipid if your preference is for coffees that swing at your taste buds like mike tyson.

the conclusion of the matter then is that i intend to stock the skyberry. we want to offer a wide spectrum of coffee and these bland[delicate] coffees appeal in particular to people who are new to the world of espresso and arent looking to have their taste buds scoured. i think it will also have a role in my kitchen as a ‘first thing in the morning’ espresso when your taste buds are extremely sensitive & dont respond well to hard-hitting espresso.

if you were comparing the Skyberry to champagne you might think of something delicate like Cristal, whereas some tastes might prefer the full bodied fruit basket of something like Krug.

anyway, expect to see the Skyberry in our line up at some point in the near future.

if you want to celebrate diversity do it with espresso. there is no particular way it ‘has to taste’.