Question 1

What does a City / City+ / Full City roast mean?

Accepted Answer

Roasting coffee is really important to us at Nonesuch, so we wanted to be a little more informative and go beyond the “light, medium, dark” descriptors. We also wanted to acknowledge the history of coffee roasting: a City Roast is a light-medium roast said to originate in New York City. Since we&#39;re based in Brooklyn, we like using the terminology – along with some other (mostly) geography-based terms – as a nod to that legacy. Below are the roast types and some generalizations about the flavors you can expect:Cinnamon Roast: A very light roast. Due to a very small amount of development, these roasts are generally tea-like with floral – sometimes vegetal – flavors. Flavor is often sour, and sometimes unpleasantly so.City Roast: A light-medium roast that is probably the most ubiquitous roast among “specialty coffee” roasters. Acidity can be quite pronounced, but sweetness balances it out and prevents sour flavors. These are often (but not always!) the most fruit-forward cups.City+ Roast: A true medium roast. The term City+ is most frequently used among home roasters, but we feel using it is a necessity to describe the wide range of flavors between a City and Full City Roast. Generally a City+ Roast will be sweeter and less acidic than a City Roast. Fruit flavors are still present, but may taste more like jam or baked fruit at this point.Full City Roast: A dark-medium roast. A good Full City Roast will start to have roasty and bittering notes that build on the sweetness of a City+ Roast. Fruit flavors may still be detectable depending on the coffee and generally have a cooked flavor.Vienna Roast: A dark roast. Bittering flavors begin to overpower any other flavors, though we&#39;ve tasted fruit notes in rare cases. Certain beans can maintain a pleasant sweetness at this roast level.French Roast: An even darker roast than a Vienna. Bitter flavor begins to overpower any sweetness and origin flavors completely disappear in all but the rarest of cases. The best French Roasts have a smoky undertone that some drinkers absolutely love.Italian Roast: An extremely dark roast in which the beans are nearly black (there is also a Spanish Roast that&#39;s even darker and tastes like charcoal). The smokiness of French Roasts here transforms to simple burnt flavors. Some consider these undrinkable, but we think Italian Roasts imported from Italy work really well in espresso drinks with milk.Among our offerings, the overwhelming majority of coffees will be roasted between City to Full City. In special circumstances, we may consider a Vienna Roast if we think a coffee can roast that dark and maintain origin flavor (I&#39;ve had coffees from Yemen and Indonesia before that only came alive once they reached a Vienna Roast, so they do exist!).That being said, it is extremely unlikely that we will ever offer a Cinnamon Roast, as they’re very finicky for tea-like flavors that we think are better found … well, in tea. Likewise, it is unlikely that we’ll offer French or Italian Roasts. That being said, if you like dark roasts, you might consider buying coffee imported from Italy, particularly if you want to brew dark roast espresso.

Question 2

What does it mean if a coffee is washed / natural / etc.?

Accepted Answer

The words like “washed” and “natural” that appear after the roast type on our shop page refer to the processing method. Coffee beans themselves are the seeds of coffee cherries, and the process refers to the method used to separate the beans from the cherry mucilage. Each process has a profound effect on the flavor of the beans. In a washed process, coffee cherries are sorted and mechanically depulped before being floated in fermentation tanks. Coffee is then washed to remove any remaining mucilage and dried before being sent to be milled. This coffee has a clean, bright flavor, and there are a lot of drinkers who only think coffee is coffee if it’s washed (though they are wrong!).In a natural process, the coffee cherries are floated in water, then dried in the sun on raised beds or patios. Cherries are then milled to remove cherry mucilage and skin around the coffee bean. The added contact time with the cherry gives naturally processed coffee a strong, fruity flavor. It also often imparts a wild fermented flavor that is polarizing among drinkers. Natural processing is often found in arid environments where water conservation is paramount, though a number of producers are experimenting with natural processes due to increased demand from coffee roasters.You can think of a honey process (or pulped natural) as something between a washed and natural process (though I&#39;m sure reading that might make coffee farmers cringe!). Coffee cherries are sorted and depulped as with a washed coffee, but rather than being fermented and washed, they are dried on patios or raised beds with any remaining mucilage intact prior to being milled. The flavor is often more full-bodied and less acidic than a washed coffee but without the fermented flavor of a natural processed coffee.Coffees from Indonesia might be wet-hulled. Similar to a washed coffee, the cherries are depulped, fermented, and then washed. However, rather than drying in parchment for days or weeks, the coffee is dried for a few hours prior to being sold. The coffee is then sent to a mill where it is dried further and milled when its moisture content is between 25 – 35% (for comparison, a typical washed coffee would be milled at ~ 11%). The coffee is then air dried rapidly without the hull until it reaches a moisture content of 11 – 13%. The process is a response to an extremely humid environment that would make the lengthy drying stage of a traditional washed process coffee impossible. Wet-hulled processing generally lends a rustic, tobacco-y flavor to coffee due to the exposure of the unhulled coffee to the air, and the method&#39;s ubiquity in Sumatra has gone a long way in giving the origin its reputation for full-bodied, earthy coffee.There are other processes out there (including a variety of processes involving anaerobic fermentation), and we’ll add them as we offer coffees that use those processes. A majority of our offerings will likely be washed coffees (about 80% of the coffees we sample are washed), though it’s not impossible that we could go through phases where we’re only selling natural and honey processes if that’s what tastes good!

Question 3

Does the coffee actually taste like the flavors listed next to them?

Accepted Answer

Tasting notes in coffee are extremely subjective, and oftentimes, flavor notes are an analogy for some of the tasting sensations in a coffee rather than absolute descriptions of the flavor (that being said, I once tried a coffee described as tasting like Thai basil soda, and that description was spot on!).We come up with our flavor notes through a series of brewings across a variety of methods, taking notes based on initial flavor impressions, aromas, and aftertastes, and we note changes as the coffee itself cools over time. We condense that down to the simple descriptions seen on the title cards and in the product descriptions.

Question 4

How should I brew your coffee?

Accepted Answer

We provide general suggestions for each coffee on our product pages and some more specific suggestions via the QR code found on each bag of coffee we sell. We’re still in the process of putting together a comprehensive brewing guide, but here are some suggestions that we think are most important to brewing good coffee:Use water that is at least 195 °F (and ideally no more than 205 °F). While some coffee drinkers have success with higher or lower temperatures, we find that this range works well for pretty much any origin or roast. Also don’t worry if you don&#39;t have a kettle that measures the water temperature – you can approximate this temperature by boiling water and leaving the kettle off heat for about 3 minutes. Use a consistent grind. A coffee’s extraction rate is related to the amount of exposed surface area of ground coffee, so to get an even extraction, it&#39;s important to ensure all grounds are the same size. We recommend that you use a burr grinder if possible, as this ensures a much more even grind than blade grinders. Electric burr grinders can be expensive, but there are also hand-crank models you can find from Hario that are less expensive (I will say that some brewers don’t like the ceramic burrs found in Hario models and prefer models with steel burrs, though I used a Hario grinder daily for nearly a decade without any major issues).Grind coffee no more than 15 minutes prior to brewing. We get it – sometimes you want to save time and grind more beans than you need at a given time. The issue is exposure to air causes coffee quality to degrade rapidly – coffee that’s been ground a day earlier will always taste stale compared to freshly ground coffee no matter how it’s been stored.Determine your preferred dosage and extraction time for your brewing method. If you&#39;re using an automatic brewing method, this one’s easy – you&#39;ll just need to adjust the amount of coffee you use until it’s right! If you’re manually brewing, this is a little harder, as you&#39;ll need to adjust both the brewing time and dose until you get your coffee just right. We&#39;d recommend starting with the instructions from the manufacturer of your brewing system and adjusting from there. At Nonesuch, we generally start with a 1:15 ratio of coffee to water (if you don’t have a scale, that&#39;s about three level tablespoons of coffee for every eight ounces of water) for pourovers and a 1:16 ratio for a French press with a brewing time of around three and a half minutes.Drink (most) coffees within six weeks of the roast date. For years, I reserved coffee for special occasions, and I always wondered why it never seemed to be as good as I remembered it when I brewed it months later. Don’t do this – coffee flavor degrades over time, with most light to medium roasts being best within two months of the roast date. Darker roasts fade more quickly and should be brewed within three weeks of the roast date. There are people who extend the life of their coffee by freezing it, and while I do want to emphasize that a lot of drinkers seem to have success with this approach, I personally didn’t have success with this approach and don’t recommend it.Make sure your coffee has had enough time to rest. This is a counterpoint to the above statement, but coffee does need some rest time prior to brewing. This is because gases in the beans form a barrier around the grounds when water is poured over them, limiting extraction potential (this is definitely an oversimplification of the chemistry). Over time, gases escape from the beans, allowing you to brew a better cup of coffee after a few days have passed. Your brew method and the roast type can have a large effect on how much rest a coffee needs – immersion brewing (I recommend at least three days of rest) needs less time than percolating methods (I recommend at least five days of rest). We’d recommend resting any beans at least seven days before brewing espresso. Lighter roast coffees may need more time than this, with cinnamon roasts often being at their best a full month after their roast date.And that’s it! This isn’t everything there is to brewing, but we think proper water temperature, grind, extraction time, and using fresh (but properly rested) coffee are the most important factors for brewing good coffee at home.

Question 5

How long does your coffee stay fresh for?

Accepted Answer

Coffee gets stale due to exposure to air, and while each coffee is a little unique in regards to how long it remains fresh, a general rule of thumb is that the darker the roast, the shorter the shelf life (this is because beans develop more cracks – and allow more exposure to air – as they are roasted darker). In most cases, light roasts (Cinnamon, City) should remain fresh for eight weeks, medium roasts (City+, Full City) should remain fresh for six weeks, and dark roasts should remain fresh for four weeks.The above applies for any unopened bags of coffee. While our bags do a decent job of keeping your coffee fresh, we recommend that you finish any opened bag within three weeks of the opening date regardless of the roasting method if you use the bag for storage. If you need to store coffee longer than that, we&#39;d recommend you store coffee in vacuum-sealed containers.

Question 6

Do I need to filter my water when brewing coffee?

Accepted Answer

The short answer here is unless your local water has a particularly unpleasant flavor that you&#39;re tasting in your coffee, you feel that you&#39;ve had trouble brewing coffee in the past due to the hardness or softness of your water, or there are actual health concerns about your municipal water, you probably can brew perfectly good coffee with the water that comes straight from your tap by varying factors like grind size, water temperature, and extraction time.The longer answer is water quality absolutely affects the quality of the coffee you brew, as the hardness and mineral content affect both the extraction strength and the flavor of the finished cup. We have found that the coffee we roast has a different flavor profile once we leave New York City even using a comparable brewing method. That being said, a lot of (expensive) products are now on the market promising to improve your coffee quality by improving the quality of your water. This includes filtration systems and packets of minerals. While it&#39;s possible that, in some cases, these can improve your coffee experience, we tend to think that addressing other aspects of your brewing method (grind quality, water temperature, extraction time) will probably do more to improve your cup than addressing water quality using consumer (or even commercial-grade) products, and we&#39;d recommend addressing water only after addressing these other issues.

Question 7

Why is it called Nonesuch?

Accepted Answer

Good question! The short answer is that as a brand committed to quality that also tries not to take itself too seriously, we liked the double meaning of the word nonesuch – the dictionary meaning is without equal, but we think that when considered as two words, it implies that no such thing actually exists.The longer answer is that Nonesuch Coffee creator Nathan Rowe grew up in Arkansas and studied literature, and the word “Nonesuch” figures into one of Arkansas&#39;s most (in)famous appearances in literature. In Mark Twain&#39;s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a couple of grifters stage a sparsely attended production of haphazard scenes from Shakespeare in Arkansas. Deciding that the “Arkansaw lunkheads” prefer low comedy – or perhaps something worse than low comedy – to Shakespeare, they proceed to stage an obscene farce called the Royal Nonesuch to which ladies and children are not permitted to attend. The performance sells out.

Question 8

Where are you based?

Accepted Answer

Nonesuch Coffee is located in Brooklyn, NY. The business itself operates out of Brooklyn Heights, and we roast in Long Island City, Queens, NY.

Question 9

Do you have any locations I can visit/pick up my order?

Accepted Answer

Unfortunately, we don&#39;t have a retail store or other location that customers can visit. We&#39;d love to change that in the future, though, so stay tuned!

Question 10

Where can I find your coffee IRL?

Accepted Answer

We don’t currently have any stockists, but check back soon – we&#39;re always working to find new shops to sell in!Interested in stocking Nonesuch Coffee? Get in touch with us at hello@nonesuch.coffee.

Question 11

I’d love to stock Nonesuch at my cafe / shop / bank that uses coffee as a reserve currency — how do I go about this?

Accepted Answer

Get in touch with us at hello@nonesuch.coffee and we can talk! We’d love to learn more about your business. Also we strongly advise you not to use our coffee as a reserve currency – regardless of our own feelings about it, coffee tends to depreciate in value over time, so it’s far from a stable asset class.

Question 12

What kind of roaster do you use?

Accepted Answer

We sample roast and test roasting profiles on an Aillio Bullet. We roast production lots on a Diedrich IR 5, using Cropster to assist us in ensuring batch to batch consistency.That being said, there will be some slight differences between different lots of the same coffee. We include roasting notes – and possible brewing adjustments – for each coffee we sell that you can access by scanning the QR code on the back of the bag.

Question 13

When will I get my order?

Accepted Answer

We ship coffee within two business days of the roast date. If you&#39;ve ordered multiple coffees that have different roast dates, your order will ship within two days of the last roast date (e.g., if the roast dates are July 7 and July 15, your order would ship by July 17). In the event that you&#39;ve ordered coffees with roast dates more than two weeks apart, we&#39;ll contact you to ask if you&#39;d prefer to split the order up.Once we ship your item, you&#39;ll get a tracking number you can use to track the shipment (check your spam folder if you haven’t received tracking, and please mark it as not spam while you’re at it :) ). We use a combination of shipping methods, so it&#39;s difficult to give an exact estimate on when you&#39;ll receive your shipment, but it should be within five business days for most customers.If you have any shipping preferences, please don’t hesitate to reach out by responding to your order confirmation or sending us an email at hello@nonesuch.coffee – there is a carrier who shall remain nameless that is notorious for leaving packages in precarious positions in my neighborhood, so we understand that some couriers are better than others depending on where you live. We do want to emphasize that we can’t accommodate every request, but we’ll do our best to provide you with a good shipping experience.

Question 14

I want to cancel / change my order. What do I do?

Accepted Answer

So long as your order hasn&#39;t shipped, all you need to do is send us an email to hello@nonesuch.coffee and let us know what we need to do! We&#39;ll either work to change your order or cancel it as needed.If your order has already shipped, there&#39;s not much we can do to change it after the fact. That being said, please reach out anyway! If there&#39;s something we can do to improve your experience, we&#39;d love to do what we can.

Question 15

Where do you ship to?

Accepted Answer

Currently, we only ship to the United States. We&#39;d love to change that in the future, but we&#39;re trying to keep things simple for the time being.

Question 16

Do you have a subscription program?

Accepted Answer

We currently offer a roaster’s choice subscription based on your brewing method. We’re considering offering other subscription types in the future, so we recommend either subscribing to our email list or following us on Instagram to keep updated!

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