Roaster’s Choice: A Hoppy Accident

Roaster’s Choice gives us permission to share coffees that go beyond our everyday lineup—an exceptional origin, an experimental process, or simply something we cannot stop drinking.

This month’s coffee was never supposed to exist.

What We Had Planned

We selected a washed Nicaraguan coffee from Fara Estate in Matagalpa for a smooth, full-bodied dark roast.

Fara Coffee has been growing coffee on its family-owned farms in the mountains of Nicaragua for five generations. The coffee is shade-grown, hand-picked, and Rainforest Alliance certified, with the approachable cocoa, hazelnut, and fruit character that makes Nicaraguan coffee so satisfying.

It would have made an excellent Roaster’s Choice all on its own.

At the same time, we were roasting an experimental Hazy IPA co-fermented coffee for our friends at Modern Monk Coffee.

Modern Monk specializes in co-fermentation—fermenting green coffee alongside active cultures from beverages such as beer, wine, and tepache before roasting. This is not coffee sprayed with artificial flavoring. The fermentation itself creates the unusual aromatics and flavors in the cup.

Then we made a mistake.

The Accident

During production, both finished coffees passed through our destoner and were accidentally collected in the same container.

Nothing was wrong with either coffee. They were simply two completely different roasts that were never supposed to end up together.

Once they were mixed, there was no separating them.

Our first reaction was that the batch was lost. We were ready to write it off and move on. But before giving up on perfectly good coffee, we did what coffee roasters do:

We tasted it.

And, against every reasonable expectation, it worked.

The deep cocoa and toasted-nut character of the dark-roasted Nicaragua met the bright, hoppy aromatics of Modern Monk’s experimental coffee. The cup was bold and full-bodied, with a surprising lift of citrus, fruit, and fermentation-driven complexity.

Neither coffee disappeared. Somehow, they made each other more interesting.

Who Gets a Coffee Like This?

We could have thrown it away because it was not part of the plan.

Instead, we decided to share it with the people most likely to appreciate something genuinely strange, completely unrepeatable, and unexpectedly delicious:

Our Roaster’s Choice subscribers.

This is exactly what Roaster’s Choice should be—a coffee you probably would not find anywhere else and one we may never be able to recreate.

As far as we know, nobody has intentionally made this exact combination before. Honestly, neither did we.

How to Brew It

This coffee is especially expressive as a pour-over, AeroPress, French press, or automatic drip.

Start with water around 195–200°F and a brew ratio between 1:15 and 1:17. Try it black first so you can experience the unusual combination before adding anything.

Despite the Hazy IPA connection, the finished coffee contains no alcohol.

Coffee Details

We are proud to present A Hoppy Accident—the coffee we nearly lost and now cannot wait to share.

We hope you enjoy our mistake as much as we do.

Fuel for the voyage.