As a coffee roasting company, our passion is to always highlight the flavors that are unique to each region, processing style, and variety and this is most commonly done with lighter trending roast styles. The 431 is the only coffee that we showcase with what a well done slightly darker roast should taste like. The components are rotating quarterly to continue our vision of seasonality in coffee. In 2019 we had the opportunity to again visit Guatemala. We arrived at the Guatemala City airport and immediately drove about three hours west to a small town on one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, Lago Atitlan. Perched on the cliffs surrounding the lake is a small town called Panajachel where we stay while visiting San Isidro Chacaya farm. After a few days we drove back east to Acatenango to Tehuya Estate. The former president of Anacafe (the Guatemala coffee association) Miguel Medina grows a varietal focused, shade covered, wild forest feeling plot of coffee. With unique shade trees and innovative employee practices we have found our second Guatemala coffee partner and are excited to be working closely with Miguel to form a strategic partnership in which Lineage will contract parcels of the land to be farmed exclusively for us. We couldn't be happier with this very dense Catuai coffee. This coffee is very special and could be roasted light and still be incredible but because of the sweetness in the cup and density of the bean it tastes even better when roasted a little heavier to our 431 espresso profile. Look for notes of roasted marshmallows with a roast and earthy taste. A true dark roast. Dark & Cozy is that comfy dark roast coffee that is easy to sip on. It is perfect with cream and/or sugar as well as just drinking it black, if that is how you roll. The level of the roast really breaks through the thickness of the milk or creamer, giving it that perfect coffee taste that we all want. When looking for what coffee to use, our main priority is to find a coffee with high density and a good amount of sweetness. The density of the coffee will be able to hold up in the roaster and not get burnt with the level of roast we are doing. Having enough sweetness is also good so that we can keep the coffee balanced even with a darker roast. We roast this coffee up until we enter the second crack for about 15 seconds, give or take. This will allow us to get all the benefits and flavors of that dark roast without damaging the bean too much or getting to the point where we are actually burning the bean. At this point in the roast, oils within the bean will begin to migrate to the surface due to the bean being much more porous from the heat. We finish the batch of coffee just before this starts to happen so that when the coffee is done, it doesn't become too oily in the packaging. Even at such a dark roast there is a lot of thought that goes into how we roast it. This coffee has been a staple at our roastery for awhile now. It has gotten us through many early mornings and late nights of roasting. We hope you enjoy Dark & Cozy.