Mec Coffee

We are hiring!

It's getting a bit too busy on weekends so we're looking to add a part timer to our little team! If you think this could be a good fit for you then please apply! If you think it could be a good opportunity for someone you know then please pass this on!

Any sharing of this advert would be much appreciated we'd love to share this beyond our network!

We are hiring! It's getting a bit too busy for one person on weekends and we're looking for someone to help out during those busy shifts.

We hugely appreciate anyone sharing this job advert as we'd really love for it to be seen by people beyond our little mec network.

Here is a picture of Will with a giant slug attacked cabbage to announce that we'll be closed tomorrow due to staff illness. Everyone is fine but like this cabbage we've been battling bugs. All will be back to normal by Monday (hopefully). Like this cabbage we are big and strong and have many layers of resilience.

If you were planning on coming in tomorrow then apologies for the closure.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, when life gives you cabbages, make sauerkraut.

Our faces when we see cakes by 🐶

We are very excited to announce a free cupping and q&a with our friend Ghily from Coffee by Tate. Next week ok Thursday 24th 5pm-7pm. Link our bio for details and to sign up, limited space!

Art works left to right:
Riya Mamtora - Collecting Cherries
Jade Kelley - Synergy
Brynn Hansen - Mother and Daughter
Gitika Joshi - Harvest Harmony

It's getting colder outside, but we have tasty coffee and treats from inside. Seems like the place to be ☕️🍪

Keep up to date with what's coming up with our lil events board.

October 17th Boss and Brew drop ins

October 24th Coffee by Tate takeover and cupping

More events coming soon!

Good luck to all of the runners tomorrow, have fun and well done for doing it! We won't be running but we will be open and serving that good good coffee. So if you're watching someone run why not come by for a coffee (apparently people will be passing Cathays Terrace around 10.42)

We've got a very special coffee on guest espresso at the moment. I had the privilege of visiting Kerehaklu back in December, a 250 acre coffee plantation in Karnataka, India. I was there to interview Pranoy Thipaiah who runs the estate along with his father Ajoy Thipaiah. The two were incredibly open, welcoming and gracious hosts. This coffee was made using a mulberry starter culture made with mulberries that Pranoy and I picked from the tree in front of his family home. The culture was used to kick start tank fermentation and then the coffee was processed as a washed. Collaborating with Pranoy has been an ongoing highlight in my career, between the Standart article, collaborating on a Q&A in Daze, London and hopefully more interesting one off coffees in years to come. Also not to forget Anuraag Vaddi who is head of design at Kerehaklu, for this coffee he created a special design to commemorate the mulberry lot which I've printed copies of to go into each 250g box.

Come try and espresso and perhaps pick up a box! Or if you can't make it in, you can order from the Skylark website.

Some pretty exciting coffees on the retail shelf and resting tucked away until they are nice and degassed before going on the frozen menu.

Coffees from 3 of the most famous farms in the world of specialty coffee:
Finca Soledad - Ecuador 🇪🇨
Los Nogales - Colombia 🇨🇴
Abu Coffee - Panama 🇵🇦

Come by if you can't wait and want to pick up a bag of beans or wait until later in the month for them to hit the frozen menu!

If you’ve been in the shop recently you might have noticed some new additions to the shop by our talented friend .signs
We also now have an events board so we can share our upcoming events in one place which we’re pretty excited about!
Thank you Sam .signs 👏

Our second freezer menu coffee is a very special one. This one comes from Kerehaklu, an estate that Will was lucky enough to visit back in December. Kerehaklu is owned by the Thipaiah family, currently at the helm are Ajoy Thipaiah and his son Pranoy. Ajoy is principally responsible for the agronomy and growing side of coffee production and Pranoy takes the lead on processing. The estate is beautiful forest farm agriculture and entirely chemical free. This coffee is a thermal shock, a method of controlling temperature to intensify and then quickly stop fermentation by encouraging a higher temperature and then quickly reducing it. It is the kind of technical processing that is increasingly popular in coffee and leads to delicious and unexpected flavour profiles.

If you're in and want to try the coffee why not have a read of the profile of Pranoy Thipaiah in the latest issue of Standart to get a bit more of an understanding of the man behind the coffee.

The coffee was beautiful roasted and packaged by Blue Tokai, it's a pleasure to have a little bit of their coffee in the shop, hopefully we can organise a bigger order from Blue Tokai in the future as we aim to showcase how good Indian specialty coffee is, in terms of growing, processing and roasting.

Daze: A collaboration between Paradox and Batch Baby, two of London's finest coffee spots the whole project was about working together and collaborating, popping up in a shared space and hosting lots of cuppings and industry events. Daze closed its door yesterday and like the best espressos it was a fairly quick experience but one that'll leave a lasting memory. This coffee is a collaboration on top of a collaboration as the Daze gang worked with Scenery to release a special coffee. This coffee is phenomenal and really fun.

Here is what Scenery had to say about it:

Collaboratively sourced with our great friends - Paradox Coffee and Batch Baby, for their pop-up collab space in the NTS Loft: Daze.
This fresh crop Ethiopian “static cherry” anaerobic natural lot from the team at Bette Buna Megadu is a bright and elevated take on the classic Guji profile, with high impact at origin.

We’re tasting:
Mango, lavender and blood orange aromatics. We’re tasting a strong note of lavender, floral honey and ripe blueberry. As it cools, the acidity shifts to be more like the European blueberry (bilberry) - slightly brighter, tarter and more complex than its Canadian cousin, and a lilac florality joins the lavender. White chocolate and blood orange notes lend a depth of complexity to a deeply complex and clean cup

Our next guest roaster (from this weekend) is Scenery, one of the most exciting new roasters in the UK in our opinion. We'll be chatting to Alex Wallace, co-founder, head of coffee - all round nice guy at 1pm today. Super short notice but don't worry it'll be saved in reels if you want to watch it later.

Frozen menu: freezer drawer full of vacuum sealed fun stuff.

First up is this gesha from

This is a beautiful jammy sweet coffee from Colombia. A bit more expensive than our other coffees at £6 for 240ml but we're pretty you'll love it.

Fairly limited amounts of this so don't hang about 🚲

In preparation for our late night cafe on Saturday Zak has been meticulously combing the Cardiff coast for foraged ingredients.

In totally unrelated news did you know there is a general election tomorrow and the UKs waterways are incredibly polluted?

Save the date!

Zak and Will have been planning a silly little night of delicious drinks, snacks and records. We'll have a small curated list of cocktails, alcoholic and non. Sweet and savoury snacks.. some seasonal, some highly processed.

It's going to be fun, if it's not fun don't worry we'll never do it again. But it probably will be fun so come along.
Zak & Will

Standart issue 35 is now in the shop, including a profile of Pranoy Thipaiah that Will wrote after staying with him on his estate Kerehaklu, back in December. Perhaps read about what makes Pranoy one to watch in the specialty world and see some beautiful photographs of his coffee estate and beagle (Kivi) from Alia Romagnoli.

Also there is a particularly lovely piece in this issue from Ben Wurgaft called At the Pond that makes for a lovely contemplative accompaniment to a coffee next time your in.

Come have a flick through next time your in!

SUEDHANG Kaffee, our next guest roaster!

Suedhang are a café and a roastery based in Tübingen, Germany. They are known for their innovation and for being willing to stand up for what they believe in. To be honest, that's what made me follow them and want to order from them, but when they got in touch and sent samples it was a huge bonus that the coffee was not only delicious but one of the most interesting, innovative and well presented offer lists I've seen in specialty. We're launching the SUEDHANG full coffee takeover on Wednesday morning but tomorrow night we'll have a first look cupping with a chance to get your hands on some very limited supply of tote bags and books. Before all that tomorrow we'll be having a Q&A over instagram live which we'll record and keep up on our story highlights for future perusal :)

SUEDHANG Q&A 9am (GMT)
Instagram live!

SUEDHANG CUPPING!
Tuesday 18th 6pm
£5 entry (but refunded against any purchases)

SUEDHANG TAKEOVER
Wednesday 19th June ~ until we run out!

Lovely lovely coffee from our lovely lovely pals at Coffee by Tate. Xander and Miranda picked this one as it really stood out on the cupping table with big orange and strawberry notes. We actually have topped up retail bags and (I think) pretty much sold out again because it's such a bomb coffee for £12. Anyhow, now it's on espresso and tasting like sweet sharp grapefruit as an espresso or pineapple upside down cake (picture 2).

Gito means tiny in Kinyarwanda. This coffee comes from Rwanda from the Gisheke washing station, it is comprised of smaller cherries that usually aren't sorted for quality in the same way and end up in commodity coffee lots. By sorting the cherries, floating for density and generally processing them with the same care as larger beans the team at the station have achieved a really good quality coffee that earns the producers a better premium and comes in at an affordable price.

This weekend is the last chance to try this coffee because on Monday we're doing our second full takeover with a very exciting guest roaster! (Details coming sooooon)

Finally: Diego Robelo! Diego is a bit of a rock star, his farm Aquiares is a 200 hectare utopia that represents everything a coffee estate can and should be! Ecologically, quality of coffee but also welfare and career opportunities for those employed there. Anyone who has been to mec more than a few times will almost certainly have seen one of Aquiares' thermal shock or anaerobic coffees on the shelf.. they're always incredible. For a longer piece on Diego and his farm I wrote up a chat between Round Hill and Diego last year (actually recorded that call sat in the window at mec) https://roundhillroastery.com/blogs/farmer/diego-robelo-aquaires-estate

When we had our Q&A with Paso Paso last week it was clear once again that Diego is an inspiring leader and the kind of person specialty coffee should be looking to for guidance.. just a little quote that stood out to me:

"Specialty is our North Star, it gives us something to work towards"

Working in a colonial industry like coffee and trying to be ethical can make you pretty cynical and disheartened but when people like Diego exist it makes a lot more sense to keep trying!

Paso Paso takeover is nearly to the end of week 1/2. Diego's thermal shock is on batch today and v60 throughout. Don't miss it, it's a real banger.

Next up from Paso Paso, Jorge Vásquez! Here he is pictured with his nephew Alex and his niece Daniela who also run the family business: Roble Negro in Costa Rica. Jorge bought his farm Finca Cedral Alto in Asseri, Central Valley in 2007. Previous to this he had been running a recycling company for 2 decades and buying the farm was a way to realise his goal of protecting the local environment. The farm is exemplary in terms of conservation and biodiversity thrives there, it is home to snakes, hawks, parrots, raccoons and even mountain lions and armadillos all living harmoniously among cedar trees (which the farm takes its name from) as well as fruit trees such as guava, banana and various citrus.

Eco-systems like this sustain incredible soil health with minimal need for inputs, fertilisers that are used are made using discarded coffee cherries (cascara) and animal dung. Additionally herbicides and fungacides are made using microorganisms found on the farm and clearing and pruning is done by hand.

The farm sits on the edge of rainforest and like many of the most ecologically mindful farms it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. We believe it is hugely important to support farms like this, it is no great hardship to do so as the coffee is delicious ☕️

Next up! Diego Baraona!

Diego is one of the 5 farmers in the Avenger's esque super team that is Paso Paso. His farm Los Pirineos in El Salvador is world famous and with good reason. The farm is sat atop an extinct volcano with a constant breeze and beautiful unique microclimate. They have dozens of different arabica varietals in production as well as 80 different types that they grow for observation. They even exclusively export their own certified Pacamara developed right there on the farm. On top of this amazing base of plant and land they have developed their own protocols for over 20 different post harvest processes.

The coffee we've got in from them is a Black Honey Pacamara, and it is exquisite. On v60 all week, batch today and guest espresso next week 👀 ☕️

Paso Paso takeover day 2! Silvio Sánchez is one of the co-owners of Paso Paso, his farm Santa Teresa de Mogotón is in Nicaragua. Silvio has an amazing farm an hour outside of the city of Ocotal in the Neuva Segovia region. The farm sits at a high altitude around 1600 meters above sea level. He primarily grows Catuai and it grows incredibly well there with a constant mist and excellent shade coverage all adding to the healthy plants and slow maturation of the coffee. The moisture on the farm means it is very difficult to dry coffee so Silvio drives down into the town which is in a valley and drys coffee there, it is much hotter and dryer and he has perfected his natural coffees over the years. The farm is unusual for Nicaraguan farms as it doesn't rely on seasonal labour, instead Silvio has a dedicated team who work with him all year round. They are a close knit bunch and have cook outs every week, which is a chance to get together, connect and relax.

The farm is well known for these naturally processed Catuai's with their distinctive notes of dark chocolate and strawberry. We've got quite a bit of this coffee on retail and guest espresso (probably on guest for about a week).

This week we are spotlighting one of the Paso Paso farmers every day. First up is our friends Bette Buna, an amazing project in Ethiopia. Hester and Dawit Syoum began Bette Buna when they took over their grandfathers small 2 hectare farm in Taferi Kela, Sidamo. They saw the amazing potential for community and impact in this little farm but new it needed to scale if it was going to have the kind of impact they wanted to make! Fast forward only a few years and their farm there is well over 20 hectares and they've expanded with an additional farm in the prestigious coffee region Guji.

This coffee comes from that second farm in the Megadu woreda. It is a natural process lot dripping with stone fruit notes and we love it.

I had the privilege of interviewing Hester for Standart magazine last year, please do take a look if you'd like to learn a bit more about their amazing work in employment, inclusion and economic development through coffee. Copies of that issue of standart are in the shop! (I think it's issue 32?)