Coffee Description
Warm honey and hazelnut sweetness bring comfort on cold mornings, while red fruits, florals, and a light airiness chimes in like an ode to springtime. Perfect for sipping in the kitchen. Dining room. Bed. Patio….
Roast Level from the Roaster
Refers to the roast level in comparison with other coffees from the roaster
Light/Medium
Variety
Caturra
Process
Washed
Elevation
2100 masl
Region
Nariño
About Benjamin Paz, Ema Ordoñez, Albeiro Pajimuy, Luis Omar Rodgriguez of Colombia
Comfort and ease. That’s what Onyx Coffee Lab had as end goal for this coffee: a transition from winter to spring. It’s a micro-lot made up of extremely small lots from four farms which all cupped incredibly well and complemented each other. Onyx purchased them separately, then blended them at their roastery.
Coffees came from: Finca El Salado, owned by Benjamin Paz Mafla, 45. He was a priest before retiring from the church, forming a family, purchasing a small farm and diving head first into coffee production.
Ema Ordoñez, part of the Inga indigenous community, owns Finca La Piedra. She honey processed this lot by pulping and putting out the parchment to dry immediately for an incredible 40 days.
Albeiro Pajimuy, aslo an active member of the Inga Community for some time but just recently started growing coffee. He processes his honey with a short fermentation, to make it easier to dry without losing the profile that comes from the honey process.
Luis Omar Rodgriguez was in the military for almost ten years, coming back to the farm he had inherited six years ago. Don Luis has learned much from his brothers who are now role models for him in the coffee business. His coffee is washed with 36 hours of fermentation, and the patio dried.
Nariño, Colombia
Onyx Coffee Lab
Lest the myth perpetuate that specialty coffee does not come from Arkansas, Onyx Coffee Lab is blowing that particular urban legend out of the water while creating a few of their own. Husband-wife owners Jon and Andrea Allen have rapidly taken the coffee world by storm with their combination of art and science.
The magic starts with sourcing, with countless small sample batches from coffee importers and with direct visits to farms around the world. "I know direct trade means a lot of different things to different people, but for us if we don’t put money in the producers hands we won’t call it direct trade," says Jon. Once found, the coffees are carefully roasted in twenty-pound or smaller batches, then shared with the three Onyx cafés and over 150 wholesale customers in thirty states.
Clearly Onyx Coffee Lab knows what they're doing: this northwest Arkansas matrix of coffee know-how routinely cleans house at the U.S. Coffee Championships; Andrea Allen placed first in the 2020 Barista Championship, while Elika Liftee placed first in the 2020 Brewers Cup Championship, and they both went on to the 2021 World Coffee Championships to place in 2nd place for Barista and 3rd place for Brewers Cup. Onyx has been chosen by Architectural Digest as Arkansas' most beautiful coffee shop, garnered multiple Good Food Awards, and been described as the "Best bags of coffee you can buy online" in GQ.
