Skylark Coffee Roasters

Costa Rica Aquiares Esperanza Natural-
Many farms in C.A are owned by wealthy westerners who have access to capital & marketing that allows them to sell their coffees at prices that indigenous people could never achieve. This coffee is different & it represents the sort of de-colonisation of the coffee supply chain that we’re seeking to support. Micah spent a week w/ Diego & the Paso Paso co-owners earlier this year, which gave us a leg up on buying what we think is his best lot to hit the open market this season. This is an Esperanza varietal which was by far the cleanest & sweetest thing we cupped from Aquiares this year. It’s a classic Skylark profile coffee: all fruit & no funk- we bought the whole lot for ourselves! Notes of tropical fruit juice & lemonade!

Mexico Rubén Cervantes Natural
This is our first fresh crop Mexican coffee of the year & our first ever coffee from the region of Oaxaca! This is our first time buying from Rubén Cervantes & his first time producing a natural coffee. This is a delicious little microlot & we 100% recommend this as a special purchase for the ‘coffee flavoured coffee’ person in your life. It will taste like an exotic cup of hot chocolate rather than a scary ‘specialty’ coffee. Truly exceptional & we’re delighted to have it & look forward to working with Rubén for years to come

Ethiopia Taferi Kela Static Cherry Natural
We are delighted to be releasing our second fresh crop coffee of the year from Bette Buna after our announcement that they’re going to be our biggest supplier of Ethiopian coffee moving forward. Our first release of coffee from the Syoum family came from their farm in Guji & this coffee is from their farm project in Sidamo. We’re delighted to get to demonstrate the two VERY different flavour profiles of these two regions from the same amazing farmers. This particular lot has an unmistakeable characteristic of violets that complements the fruit flavours of apricot & meyer lemon perfectly. It almost cups like a washed coffee. Truly an exceptionally clean coffee, particularly for a static cherry natural

Join us this Saturday evening at Triple Point cafe in Brighton with our good friends from Ensambles who supply our famous Guerrero coffees! We'll have hot coffee, chilled wines, and even more chilled vibes. ✌️We will be talking about the importance of agroforestry and biodynamic farming practices that result in the best coffee we've ever had from Mexico!

Supporting nature & the environment has always been a key part of what we do however, we still weren’t doing enough day-to-day to reduce our carbon impact, so we’ve made some big moves here:

 •We’ve moved to more than 80% natural coffee last year, as good research is showing that this method of processing coffee is better for the environment due to lower water usage, far lower carbon emissions (less rotting cherry compost) & less water pollution

 •We delivered an estimated 3.3t of coffee by bicycle in 2023 - majority of our local wholesale coffee & mostly in reusable bucket 

•We sent all our jute coffee sacks, cardboard waste & 50 sacks of chaff to Rock Farm to be used as mulch & compost - it’s essentially soil-ready carbon that we can lock in the ground instead of adding to emissions

But, our biggest switch of the year was a move to plastic-free completely home compostable/paper recyclable packaging for our 250g units, though not without controversy!

Specialty coffee’s “freshness over everything” mantra is relevant to the shelf life & deliciousness of your coffee but overblown & a bit blinkered, in our view.

There’s a massive downside that comes with the freshness optimised packaging the whole coffee industry uses: These multi-layered bags are energy intensive, fossil fuel based & resource inefficient because they include plastic &/or foil in the layup as well as plastic valves, zips, etc.

Our new bag-in-a-box system isn’t perfect. The bags aren’t resealable, they don’t have air valves & they don’t keep the coffee fresh for quite as long. On balance, we think that’s an acceptable tradeoff & a necessary one  - we in consuming countries need to make actual sacrifices if we’re going to have a shot at stopping catastrophic climate change

Cutting our coffee’s shelf life from 16 to 10 weeks actually seems like the least we could do - for longer storage, storing coffee in a jar/ tupperware is an easy fix

We’ve got two new coffees in:

Uganda Norman Florals Natural with notes of Raspberry, Nutella & Honeysuckle.

This is the first Ugandan coffee we’ve had here at Skylark & we’re very excited about it. We couldn’t be more proud to be working with the Coffee Gardens project in Mt. Elgon Eastern Uganda. The Coffee Gardens project is run by an inspirational, family driven young team that are significantly raising the value & price paid of coffees from the Mt. Elgon community.

This coffee is named after the processor, Norman Mukuru. Norman processes 2 types of natural coffees: heavy, anaerobics, & these lighter, minimally processed naturals that he calls the ‘Florals’. Norman’s Florals are right up our street. They’re fruity, floral, clean & very very drinkable. It’s the sort of naturally processed African coffee that we love to have dozens of on our offer list & we think it blows other Ugandan coffees you might be used to completely out of the water!

Next Colombia El Obraje Washed with notes of Chocolate, Apricot, Orange & Nectarine.

Pablo Guerrero is one of the first coffee farmers that Micah met more than a decade ago. Pablo’s farm has an unusual number of distinct microclimates & his best coffees such as his Gesha are planted at the highest elevations, some of them up to 2600 meters above sea level. Micah completed in the USBC with Pablo’s coffee & came to the highest ever placing of 7th. The next year, Andrea Allen from Onyx won the USBC with Pablo’s coffee, which Micah imported for them at the time. Needless to say, in the years since Pablo has just gone from strength to strength & this year’s harvest is absolutely delicious!

We’ve stocked Pablo Guerrero’s coffee every year since the beginning at Skylark & it’s always been a popular one. It will probably sell fast, so get in there if you’re a washed coffee lover!

A very special day and a half in Munich.

📸 1-3: Thank you Denes for your kindness and for showing us a round. Very special to have a tour of amazing cafes showcasing Bette Buna coffees.

4-6: Huge thanks to Jacob and Cafe Blá for their hospitality, what a welcoming, supportive and fun scene you guys have created there! One we hope to connect with more in the future.

7-8: Finally Joe at Supremo, always great to catch up and drink some delicious coffees, amazing to see a roastery, brand and community that strong and positive. Also nice to see Micah's face and incredibly strong mustache as they had some copies of Standart.

At the start of this month Micah and Will went to Copenhagen for World Of Coffee, WOC is always a nice way to connect with coffee friends from other parts of the world and catch up and make plans for the future. This trip was particulalry special as we got to spend a lot of time with the gang. You can expect coffees from .sanchezorellana (and hopefully) in the future and we've already got some coffee from and on our list. The trip really reminded us how important both collaboration and solidarity across the supply chain are and that's why next week Will is heading to the Netherlands and Germany to do a week long roaster and cafe tour with .syoum of Bette Buna. More on that in another post and expect lots of stories from spots they visit. If you know a cafe or roastery that they should visit in Utrecht, Rotterdam, or Munich.. or maybe somewhere in between, let us know! They can try and fit in a visit :)

“Helping to rewild the skies of Sussex and beyond”

An update from Knepp Wildland Foundation on the White Stork Project - one of our chosen project’s to support at Skylark

The folks at Knepp Wildland Foundation have had their busiest ringing season yet, with a total of 53 young storks fledge this year from 19 nests - 5 of these nests (and 9 young storks) are in a predator-proof enclosure on the ground, made by the previously injured, non-flying storks who only started breeding for the first time last year. This is an increased number of storks fledge from last year, so the growing colony is showing strong signs of being happy and healthy!

The project has directly reached over 1,000 children and young adults in 2024. Either through visits to see the storks at Knepp, guided walks, workshops or school assemblies

Some Collaborations include, the Natural History Museum who recently collected samples from nests and failed eggs to investigate invertebrate associations with stork
Nests. And the White Stork Project is featured in the NHM Birds exhibition which is currently running

Finally, the project has attracted a lot of media attention over the past few weeks – it was featured on local and national BBC news and will be airing on the One Show
shortly. Coverage like this shows how much public interest there is for hopeful and inspiring nature recovery projects.

This flagship reintroduction is paving the way for future species to be introduced the Weald to Waves corridor: a host of ‘scrubland superheroes’ along including red-backed shrike, black-veined white butterflies and white-tailed eagles

Whilst they push forwards the ambitions of the corridor on the ground, the reintroduction of the white stork is helping to engage communities, inspire hope and rewild the skies of the UK’s most ambitious nature recovery corridor!

📸 photo taken from the White Stork Project

The Syoum family is now our biggest and most important supplier of Ethiopian coffee. We wrote about it on the blog, and explained why this family farm project is so different and so important for us to partner with.

Ethiopian coffee is the best in the world, and paradoxically it's one of the hardest places to get clarity and do social work in a way that makes a difference. We've partnered with on the Stumping Project there for the last three years, but as that project winds down, we were looking for new opportunities to do good in the birthplace of coffee. Bette Buna is an equal opportunity employer, a force for good in their community, and a brilliant supplier of coffee for us to build a relationship with. It doesn't hurt that the Ashu Syoum Anaerobic we have from them is the best coffee of the year so far!

Goal 2. Support cafes at the opposite end of the supply chain as they create vital community spaces and face huge financial challenges.

We’ve realised independent cafes are a main part of our purpose.

It may seem obvious to support cafes who buy our coffee, but when we started Skylark we focused mostly on farmers and other marginalised communities as the most undermined parts of our industry

However, it’s becoming more clear that independent cafes are facing structural business problems, especially in the UK’s post-Brexit economic malaise. Cafes sit at the opposite end of the supply chain to farms and in our view they’re just as important - coffee is a focal point for gathering and discussion in Taferi Kela, Ethiopia, just as in Brighton’s North Laine. We believe these spaces are critical at a time when the world is polarised and isolated, and the local cafe often fills a hole left by pubs, community centres, libraries, churches and other spaces

These spaces (particularly the good independents) are more at risk than ever due to ballooning costs. This (plus some naivete) is why we didn’t raise wholesale prices on our main espresso blends in 2023 in spite of our own rising costs. Hiring Will as our main wholesale support was critical here. Everyone who’s met him knows that he lives out his values, including kindness to all. He’s always an advocate for the cafes we work with and his slightly insane cupping tour last year (something like a dozen events in 3 months) was an attempt to provide added value to our cafe partners in the form of free events to help connect with customers and community

We also can’t talk about supporting cafes without mentioning Pro Baristas: Our sibling project has trained more than 2,000 coffee professionals at this point. PB helps unemployed people find coffee work while offering a dramatic, free support option to cafes struggling to find the right kind of staff in Brighton and Sussex.

Shyira is a washing station owned by the Muraho Trading Co. who work closely with Raw Material, the importer who we bought this coffee from. We cupped with Mat from RM at a public cupping he put on with our pals Hard Lines in Cardiff & the Shyira coffees really stood out as delicious examples of what Rwandan coffee can taste like.

We purchased two lots, one of them washed & the other one natural & we’d highly recommend picking up a box of each & tasting them side by side as it’s a great way to get an understanding of the impact of processing on cup profile!

The natural, felt the most like “a Skylark coffee” it’s got loads of big juicy fruit notes and is clean and sweet.

The washed, it’s clean & sweet but with a syrupy body & a fruit profile coffee that is rarely achieved by coffees outside of East Africa without more intensive processing.

This lot like most from Rwanda is a Red Bourbon, historically the government (specifically the National Agricultural Export Board or NAEB) has been very supportive but strict about farming giving out seedlings & fertilizer to farmers. More recently some loosening of legislation has led to farmers having access to other varietals but for the time being it’s still mainly all Red Bourbon!

Rwandan Red Bourbon is known for a distinctive flavour profile, orangey, sweet & deep.

This coffee is an unusual one for us, we love coffees from Brazil and in particular top lots like this from Espirito Santo a region to the East of the perhaps better known Minais Gerais.

The thing that’s unusual about it is that it’s a washed coffee, most of the coffee produced in Brazil is either pulped natural or natural, fully washed coffees like this are more unusual & as we’ve been moving our buying mostly away from washed coffees with a general buying mix of 80% naturals to 20% washed it’s perhaps even a bit more unusual!

So why did we buy it? Because it’s incredibly good.
We cupped it as a team & everyone kept having to check the notes because the profile was distinctly like a washed Kenyan coffee, bright, lovely clean sweet acidity & not at all what we’ve come to expect from Brazil, generally more known for those textural chocolatey coffees (which we also love). 

Valdeir Cezati is a fifth generation coffee producer in Pedregulho, Castelo, Espirito Santo. This lot is a blend of Red & Yellow Catuai, he credits switching much of his production to Red Catuai with his success:
“We spent 19 years producing specialty coffees, but without results in quality competitions. We changed the variety to Red Catuai in the coffee plantation & the victories came”

The farm & Cezati have built quite a reputation this year his coffees won the local Pio Corteletti competition. Another thing we really like about Cezati is that he has stopped using pesticides entirely & is constantly improving his environmental impact as a farmer. We hope to buy more coffee from Cezati in the future & hopefully learn more about him & his farm.

This is possibly our most exciting release so far this year & quite possibly the best Ethiopian coffee we’ve released at Skylark.

Micah committed to buying the whole lot within about 5 minutes of the team cupping the pre shipment samples, it is a truly exceptional coffee!

As well as being a super high scoring coffee at 90 pts it’s also our first fresh crop Ethiopian of the year, that said the quality of the coffee is only part of why we’re so excited about this coffee. 

This coffee comes from Bette Buna, a coffee company based in Ethiopia that we are thrilled to start working with. It was founded by Hester Westerveld-Syoum & Dawit Syoum when they inherited their grandfather’s two hectare farm in Taferi Kela in Sidamo. They decided to grow & scale the farm so it could become the foundation for a larger company that could have greater impact. Hester & Dawit met doing development work & have previously founded an NGO called Joni that focuses on growing opportunities for entrepreneurship. 

Coffee is a big deal in Ethiopia, over 33% of the countries GDP comes from the export of coffee & 80% of that production comes from smallholder farmers with under 2 hectares, when you factor in that the average household size in a region like Sidamo is 9 you can see that it impacts a lot of people! 90% of people working in coffee in Ethiopia don’t make a livable income (as in one that allows them to afford healthcare & education let alone luxuries). Bette Buna was formed to meet the obvious need to improve outcomes for smallholders. 

There isn’t enough of a word count to give Bette Buna the credit they deserve so head to our website to check out the full coffee blurb, or better still their website directly for more details: bettebuna.com

So how are we doing with each of our goals?

Goal 1. Support coffee farmers by paying a price that they identify as fair and sustainable. Verify that they are treating workers and the environment well (this will be difficult). Work with like-minded importers

We paid more than ever for our coffee:
We spent just about £140,000 ex-warehouse (landed in the UK) on green coffee in 2023 on total coffee sales of £333k. This was the first time in our operation that more than 42% of coffee sales went to green coffee. This is important, because sometimes simply paying more for coffee really is the biggest thing a roaster can do.

A note; there’s a push in the industry to publish farm gate prices rather than gross margins. Instead, we think it’s best as roasters to internally know your farm gate prices and publish your ex-warehouse/FOT prices so you’re sharing your own data, not the farmer’s.

We also added a lot of importing partners last year as we think it’s important to branch out and work with some smaller importers who specialise in one region or particular communities. Most importantly, we’re doing our best to work with the exporter/importer in each region that farmers tell us is most effective at paying early and fairly - the main ethical test for importers in our opinion.

We’re focused on using innovative, ethical coffees for our main volume coffees, not just PR pieces/occasional single origin slot.

A couple of key examples:
•Biodynamic coffee from smallholders in Guerrero Mexico with Ensambles Coffee. This is an impoverished part of Mexico, with tiny crop yields and sky-high production costs. We bought this coffee because we think what they’re doing is critical for their physical & natural ecosystem. We’ve grown our volume with them from 6 bags in 2022 to 31 in 2023, to a planned 50+ in 2024

•Our most used coffee last year & this year is a Brazilian natural coffee from Santa Rosa, a certified carbon-neutral farm (this is actually a big deal). Also, Brazilian farm workers have a relatively high minimum wage, allaying some major concerns about worker abuse that exist elsewhere

El Vergel Estate in Tolima, Colombia is renowned for producing exceptional coffees. We’re releasing 2 coffees from them: a Yellow Bourbon Natural & a Pink Bourbon White Honey - both are delicious & the kind of flavour bomb coffees we’ve come to expect from El Vergel.

The estate is now famous for its exceptional & often experimental coffees yet it only transitioned to coffee production in around 2009/10, before that the focus was avocados & it had been one of the most productive avocado farms in Colombia. In 2009/10 there was a drop in the market price for avocados caused by a disease that affected the crop so Martha Bayter (mother of Elisas & Shady who run the farm today) decided to diversify to protect the family business. This decision proved wise & they have gone from strength to strength.

Today they grow 28 varietals of arabica & have developed many experimental processes including the koji process which they developed alongside Finnish barista champion Kaapo Paavolainen & American coffee consultant Christopher Feran

We’re excited to have these coffees on our list along with some other absolutely incredible juicy fun coffees releasing over the next few weeks, summer really is in full swing!

Our updated mission statement, lightly modified from last year:

•Pay coffee farmers a price that they identify is fair and sustainable. Verify that they are treating workers and environment well (yes, this is hard)

•Support cafes at the opposite end of the supply chain. They create vital community spaces and face huge financial challenges

•Minimise our impact on the environment through better buying and selling. Do this without enforcing top-down climate requirements on farmers

•Pay our staff enough to live the lives that they value. Reward them when the project goes well. No one gets rich.

•Remain a registered non-profit. Publish all of our finances so anyone can verify what we’re doing. All profits go to support our partner charity projects

•Gradually cede more “voting rights” to customers, staff and long term coffee farmer partners

•Grow to a size where we can buy coffee at an impactful level. Generally, this requires a shipping container from each country

•Shift the industry conversation toward topics like redistribution, poverty and environmental sustainability

Our annual transparency report is HERE!

People are (rightly) skeptical when we claim to be an ethical, non-profit coffee roastery. We say all year we don’t exist to make money, we exist to make change. This is where we prove it and show you where every penny goes.

We definitely didn’t get everything right last year, but we’re open and honest about everything rather than just publishing the good marketing stuff. This transparency report isn’t ‘tacked on’, it’s the essence of who we are at Skylark and what we’re doing on our journey toward being ethical and kind to all. This report is the most important thing we publish all year.

Thanks to ALL of you for supporting this vision of a better future that we call Skylark, and thanks in advance for reading and sharing our annual report. Link in the bio!

-Much love from and to the entire Skylark Family.

We changed our retail coffee packaging to get rid of the plastic parts. We think they’re gorgeous, but it comes with trade-offs!

The problem is, No. 4 recyclable plastic bags (our previous package) are notoriously hard to recycle and mostly aren’t. Meanwhile, “compostable” packaging and “plant-based” plastics are mostly marketing terms with huge waste problems attached.

Our new outer boxes are cardboard and our inner bags are pure paper — with a thin layer of alcohol-based lining (used in medicines) to make them food safe. This is brand new technology, and our current best solution. You can paper recycle OR home compost the bag and the box.

Yes, the coffee’s peak freshness decreases from 3-4 months down to 2-3 months because there’s no plastic air valve, the film barrier is thinner and there’s no resealable zip (a fairly recent innovation). It’s not a perfect solution, but we think this is a worthwhile tradeoff to eliminate 38,000 pieces of additional plastic waste this year. Real change probably means losing some convenience.

And we’re still hunting for something better. For more info, including certificates and details on these materials, see our latest blog post

*coloured inner bags coming next week*

Micah cupped about 150 different lots from Ethiopia this year and we are blowing out the budget with 15 different coffees from Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, Harrar, Jimma and Guji

This coffee is the last of the 21-22 harvest Ethiopian coffees we purchased to hit our offer list before our new 22-23 harvests arrive

It’s tasting really beautiful and showing how well Ethiopian coffees hold their flavour. We’re really ending on a nice note with this one, with a beautiful coffee from Yirgacheffe, one of the most renowned coffee growing regions in Ethiopia

Idido is a classic Yirgacheffe natural and the producer Nafkot Admasu has an amazing reputation. A legendary coffee from a legendary woman. Nafkot Admasu owns a 0.5 hectare farm as well as a processing station where she employs 6 permanent workers as well as 35 seasonal workers during the harvest. The processing station specializes in producing natural coffees, which are generally better for the environment due to not requiring as much water but also due to the green house emissions from discarded decomposing coffee cherry

Nafkot’s approach is very environmentally conscious throughout, growing a lot of shade trees such as false banana and avoiding the use of chemicals. Due to the scale of her farm it isn’t financially viable to pay for certification but the standards met on the farm would easily meet requirement criteria for organic certification!

When you all come to work dressed in green…

Obviously a prime time to grab a photo with our green coffees!

In true British style, the weather took a turn the week we release the “Sunbeam Blend”

We wanted a coffee that would taste like sunshine in a cup, a blend of our natural Colombia Claudina and our washed Rwanda Gitesi gives us just that! Perfect hot or cold over ice!

Fancy a box to try out for yourself?

Then make sure you follow the instructions below to be in with a chance of bagging yourself one on us👇🏻:

•Make sure you’re following us on instagram
•Like and save this post
•Tag friend(s) in the comments

We will announce the winner next week 😊

The categories!

If you’re new here, or just need a little reminder, here are our handy colour coded categories to help navigate our extensive offers list:

•Brown: classic, chocolatey, nutty and stone fruit - often washed process coffees

•Blue: cooked berries, fruit candies, tropical fruit, boozy - often natural process coffees

•Green: floral, citrusy, fresh stoned fruit- often washed process coffees

•Pink: a little extra special, fresh fruits and florals - often natural process coffees

We’re always happy to answer any questions you have about our coffees, or anything Skylark related!

The world of specialty coffee can feel pretty intimidating, especially if you’re new to it. We really want to try to help demystify an industry that has too many unnecessary secrets, whilst also being the most transparent we can be!

Save the date for this Wednesday!

Our sibling charity Pro Baristas is hosting a cupping with  and Alejandra from 

If you’re a local roaster or just a coffee nerd, this is a great opportunity to taste some really incredible fresh crop lots from Colombia including top lots from the famous El Vergel farm.

This Wednesday at 5pm at the Florence Road Market and Cafe. Be there!














coffee

Which of our pink coffees would you choose for a tasty spring-time brew?

Ethiopia Duwancho Microlot Natural with notes of strawberry, orange and papaya

Indonesia Sesongot Natural with notes of watermelon juice and nasturtium

or

Costa Rica Aquiares Thermal Shock Natural with notes of tropical daiquiri and coffee blossom

Let us know if the comments 👇🏻

We are just about catching up after the bank holiday influx of orders - It’s been a busy one!

We hope you had a great long weekend…and subsequently shorter week.

It’s shaping up to be a lovely sunny one here in Brighton - finally 🤩

New to the offer list:

Thailand Sirinya Honey with notes of Papaya, Matcha & Agave

This is the first coffee we’ve ever bought from Thailand & we’re excited to release it. This one is just a tiny volume, one half bag (30KG) so we don’t expect it to hang around very long!

Sirinya Coffee is a coffee company, it is not only a coffee farm but also a roastery & a coffee shop all located in the mountains within the Chiange Rai province. The business is currently led by couple: Oil & Goh Chaosuwanwilai who are passionate about helping their local community, stewardship of the land & also pursuing excellence in all aspects of coffee.

———

China Aqi Badu Natural with notes of Chocolate, Cherry & Nutella

This is our second coffee from China & a very close replacement to the Banka that we just ran out of. This lot is also a Catimor from the Banka washing station in Yunnan. As the climate changes, Asian coffees & China in particular will likely play a key role in specialty coffee’s future. Here’s a beautiful chocolate/cherry one to kick us off!

We bought both coffees from Indochina an importer that specialises in Asian coffees, we’re excited to be working with them - & with their help - some really exciting coffee farmers.