A 100g bag pours roughly six cups, which puts a considered morning at a little over the price of a takeaway flat white, made at home in your own time. You are also paying for things that cost us money and are easy to skip: single-origin buying rather than blending, roasting to order rather than to stock, and laboratory screening on the green bean.

Kayon Mountain, Guji. Heirloom varietals, naturally processed at 1,900 to 2,200 metres. If you already drink filter coffee black and notice the difference between origins, yes. If you take it with milk and sugar and want something dependable rather than distinctive, one of the chocolatier origins will suit you better, and we would rather point you there than sell you the wrong bag.

Can I trust what you claim?

By publishing the parts that do not flatter us. This coffee is certified organic, audited annually by an accredited body. Every batch goes to an independent laboratory accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 before roasting, and the reports are published whole rather than summarised into a claim. Where a lot has not been screened yet, we leave the space empty rather than borrow another result.

How long does a bag last?

Roughly six cups from 100g, so a fortnight for one person drinking a cup most mornings, or about a week for two. It is a deliberately small bag. Coffee is at its best in the first weeks after roasting, and we would rather you finished it while it is still worth drinking than kept it going stale.

How should I brew this one?

We would start with filter, v60 or chemex. or immersion, aeropress. Roasted light, so it is forgiving of a slightly coarse grind and rewards water just off the boil. Whole bean, ground at home if you can, because coffee begins losing its aromatics within minutes of grinding.

What if I do not enjoy it?

Write to us. If the bag is faulty, unfresh, or not what we promised, we replace it or refund it. Taste is personal, so if a coffee simply did not suit you, tell us what you thought and we will point you at the one that will. It helps us think about what to carry next.

Origin 04 Guji, Ethiopia

Ethiopia Kayon

RM35 / 100g whole bean

Kayon Mountain, Guji. Heirloom varietals, naturally processed at 2,000 metres.

Single originTestedRoasted fresh

Screened for ochratoxin A and aflatoxins on the green bean, before we roast.

Roasted to your order. · Posted within two working days.
Shipped worldwide by DHL or FedEx, 3 to 5 days.
Postage RM7 in Peninsular Malaysia, free at RM80 and above. RM12 in East Malaysia, free at RM150 and above. Elsewhere, calculated at checkout.

or, a standing arrangement →

Farm: Kayon Mountain G1
Varietal: Heirloom
Process: Natural
Altitude: 1,900–2,200 m
Roast: Light
Weight: 100g whole bean
Brew: Filter, V60 or Chemex
Immersion, AeroPress

86 / 100 SCA cupping score. On the 100-point scale, 80 and above is specialty grade.

Prefer a pairing? See the duos and trios →

The cup

Mango. Not subtle. The tropical fruit is right there, upfront, almost syrupy. Then coconut. Not the flavour so much as the texture. Something round and palate coating. Mandarin orange at the finish, pulling everything into focus.

A natural processed Ethiopian that does not ask to be explained.

The story

Ismael Hassen Aredo founded Kayon Mountain in 2012, with his family. Five hundred hectares of land. Three hundred under coffee. The rest is forest, kept deliberately uncultivated. The estate is certified organic, biodynamic, and shade-grown. Compost is made on site. Twenty-five people work here full time. Three hundred more come for the harvest. They earn fair wages, with healthcare and transport included. In an area where the main alternative is mining work, the farm offers a different shape of life.

The family runs its own wet and dry mills, which is uncommon in Ethiopia. Each lot can be traced to a single hillside, and sold direct to specialty buyers, bypassing the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange. Few farms in the country do this.

The beans

Heirloom. Natural. Light roast.

A standing arrangement

Arriving on a rhythm.

For drinkers who already know which coffee they want. Same coffee, same bag, the same single-origin standard. This is about not running out.

Pause, skip, or end whenever you like. A single email does it.

01Why this one

Why it is on the shelf.

We buy this lot from Kayon Mountain, Guji. Grown at 1,900 to 2,200 m. One farm, one lot, one harvest, bought because the cup earned it and not because it was easy to source.

02Why organic

What it means by the time it reaches you.

Most coffee is grown on a schedule of sprays. Fertiliser, herbicide, fungicide, applied to a plant that fruits in some of the wettest country on earth. It works, and it leaves a farm that needs a little more of it every season.

Organic is the decision not to. Compost in place of synthetic nitrogen, shade canopy in place of a cleared field, three years of it before the word may be used at all. It costs the farmer more and yields less, which is why so little coffee is grown this way.

You taste the consequence rather than the practice. Under shade the cherries ripen slowly and unevenly, so they are picked in passes rather than stripped in one. Nothing was added to the field to carry a thin harvest. What is in the cup, the tree made.

And there is the part that matters at seven in the morning, before anyone has thought about agriculture. You are not wondering. It is the same instinct as turning the olive oil around to read the back, applied to the one thing you drink every single day.

The longer case for organic →

03What we measured

Nine hundred and fifty-two molecules.

A certificate records what a farm agreed not to use. It cannot tell you what is in the bag you are holding. So we send the green beans to an independent laboratory and ask that question separately.

This lot, batch 0526-EKY, was screened against 952 pesticide and herbicide residues by two methods, most of them to a hundredth of a milligram per kilogram, alongside ochratoxin A and the four aflatoxins. Every line came back the same. Not detected.

The full report is below, unedited. We publish it rather than summarise it, because a claim you cannot check is only a claim.

Read this batch report →All published results → What we test for, and why →

In other kitchens

What people say after the second bag.

Before you buy

The questions we would ask.

Is it worth RM35?: A 100g bag pours roughly six cups, which puts a considered morning at a little over the price of a takeaway flat white, made at home in your own time. You are also paying for things that cost us money and are easy to skip: single-origin buying rather than blending, roasting to order rather than to stock, and laboratory screening on the green bean.
Is this one for me?: Kayon Mountain, Guji. Heirloom varietals, naturally processed at 1,900 to 2,200 metres. If you already drink filter coffee black and notice the difference between origins, yes. If you take it with milk and sugar and want something dependable rather than distinctive, one of the chocolatier origins will suit you better, and we would rather point you there than sell you the wrong bag.
Can I trust what you claim?: By publishing the parts that do not flatter us. This coffee is certified organic, audited annually by an accredited body. Every batch goes to an independent laboratory accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 before roasting, and the reports are published whole rather than summarised into a claim. Where a lot has not been screened yet, we leave the space empty rather than borrow another result.
How long does a bag last?: Roughly six cups from 100g, so a fortnight for one person drinking a cup most mornings, or about a week for two. It is a deliberately small bag. Coffee is at its best in the first weeks after roasting, and we would rather you finished it while it is still worth drinking than kept it going stale.
How should I brew this one?: We would start with filter, v60 or chemex. or immersion, aeropress. Roasted light, so it is forgiving of a slightly coarse grind and rewards water just off the boil. Whole bean, ground at home if you can, because coffee begins losing its aromatics within minutes of grinding.
What if I do not enjoy it?: Write to us. If the bag is faulty, unfresh, or not what we promised, we replace it or refund it. Taste is personal, so if a coffee simply did not suit you, tell us what you thought and we will point you at the one that will. It helps us think about what to carry next.

Everything else we get asked → Our standard, in full →

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