Hi Friends,
Greetings from rainy Revelstoke. We hope the fall season is treating you well! A few weeks ago, we were down at the Okanagan Coffee Fest and spent a weekend pouring, tasting, and talking shop with people from all over B.C. It was great to meet other roasters, share coffee, and swap stories about the joys and challenges of roasting. We came home full of inspiration, and a few thoughts about what to talk about this month.
In short, we’ve had roasting and sourcing on the mind lately. For many coffee-producing regions, the main harvest season runs from January to July, which means that new crops arrive here in late summer/early fall. This is an important moment for us as it’s when we make most of our buying decisions for the year ahead. When it comes to purchasing, we’ve become more selective over time, gravitating toward importers who build direct, transparent relationships with growers.
Sourcing plays a big part in our work as roasters — arguably the most important part — but more on that in another newsletter.
Back to roasting… It’s one of those things that reveals new layers of complexity and nuance each time we do it. Small adjustments in temperature or airflow can change everything, from how the sweetness shows up, to how much body the cup has, to whether a fruit note pops or hides.
These days at Holm, we roast both blends and single origins, and the two serve different purposes. Our single origins are all about clarity. They show off the character of a particular place, a farm, a process and a harvest — all of the notes that make a coffee unique. Blends are about harmony. They’re the coffees that hold a steady line, cup after cup, month after month, and creating that consistency is its own craft.
For over a year, we brought in two Mexican coffees: one from Oaxaca, followed by another from Chiapas. These became a real customer favourite and had the perfect middle ground flavours: balanced, chocolatey, and familiar. People came back for them again and again, which presented an issue when it ran out. The gap was immediately felt by customers and it highlighted one of the big challenges with single origins: they change with every harvest, so when something sells out, they’re hard to replicate.
With that in mind, we decided that we needed to build a blend that could keep that spirit alive year-round, offering the same cozy profile, but with more flexibility for us in sourcing. Creating this new blend has been our main focus lately, and though the process has been time-consuming, we’re thrilled with the results. This new blend really feels like it’s going to fill the void.
And so, without further ado, we’re stoked to introduce Sweet as a nut to our lineup. It features a Yellow Bourbon from the Barbosa family in Brazil — the same coffee that anchors our Best Breakfast Ever. It is paired with a beautiful coffee from Colombia sourced by our amazing importer's network. Together, they bring structure and sweetness with notes of caramel, nuts and dried fruit.
Lastly, we’ve just dropped two new single origin coffees — like we said, we’ve been busy!! The floral, honey-like, washed Ethiopian from Gigesa Guji alongside the beautiful, bright and structured coffee from Diana Quinayas in Colombia are sure to be showstoppers.
Nearly three years in, we still feel like students, and every batch of coffee we roast teaches us something new. We can’t wait to hear what you think of these new coffees!
Thanks for reading,
Izzy & Simon
Holm
P.S. Keep an eye on the menu over the next few weeks Wouldn’t It Be Coulis — our 2024 limited-released roast is coming back from the archives right on time for the Christmas holiday! A natural Ethiopian, darker-roasted coffee with a fruity twist, it’s lively and festive, and was one of our favourites to roast and drink. We’re excited to have it back for the season!
