Dark Woods' desire for inclusivity informs our roasting and blending philosophy. Though all speciality roasters aim to source the best green coffees from great producers, not all explore the full range of flavours locked within them. Lighter roasting retains fruit, brightness and origin character but often misses the kind of nutty, caramel and chocolate sweetness developed by longer and fuller roasts. By roasting at a range of levels from light to dark, we aim to deliver familiar flavours but with an unfamiliar vibrancy and depth.
Our yellow bags. Speciality-grade coffees, often blended and always available. Many of these are formulated with an intended brewing method in mind but they offer consistent and delicious coffee drinking experience all year round, however you choose to drink them.
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Dark yet bright, Crow Tree is a rarity amongst speciality coffees. Top quality, high altitude Arabicas are more commonly left light but we felt that this only tells half their story. By using the cleanest available green coffee we are able to roast darker to develop bold yet defined flavours that match those found in the very best single estate chocolate.
Crow Tree utilises coffees sourced from farms closely involved with the Café Femenino Project. This ground-breaking organisation supports women farmers and producers in what can be a challenging and male-dominated industry.
A Dark Woods take on a more traditional style of filter coffee, Good Morning Sunshine is bursting with toasty and nutty flavours. Good high altitude washed Central American coffees are taken on a little in the roast to develop body and to add depth and sweetness to this robust and tasty blend. Less fruit-driven than our house Colombian coffee, El Jordan, Good Morning Sunshine is a familiar coffee treated with uncommon love and respect. Because sometimes you just want a coffee that tastes, well, like coffee.
Not so much stuck between extremes as offering the best of both, Milk Wood was not only the first blend we roasted but the concept around which Dark Woods was built. A medium roast delivers familiar caramel sweetness but adventurous sourcing takes it beyond the perceived limits of this style. Validation of our approach arrived in 2016 when Milk Wood won a prestigious Golden Fork for best Northern Product in the Great Taste Awards.
Our lightest espresso, Arboretum is a celebration of nature and origin. It changes regularly to reflect the freshest and most interesting coffees that we can find and may take the form of a harmonious blend or a stunning single estate. Sweet and vibrant in milk, bright and juicy when drunk black, Arboretum is a coffee for the curious and the bold.
Snow Stone, our winter blend, evokes all the flavours of the season. Two natural processed coffee, one from Brazil and one from Ethiopia, that combine to give you a dried cherry sweetness and a smooth chestnut flavour. Added to this is a little washed processed coffee from Colombia. The fuller roast style adds dark chocolate overtones and a full body.
The coffee takes its name from one of the Stanza Stones, a series of poems carved into the rocks in the Pennine Hills. The Snow Stone itself sits in a long disused quarry at Pule Hill above the village of Marsden, etched with a verse from acclaimed poet Simon Armitage.
To be enjoyed in front of the fire, as the nights draw in and the leaves begin to fall.
Our Lamplight Decaf is gently decaffeinated using the Swiss Water method. This process not only removes the caffeine without resorting to harsh chemicals but also imparts a breaded sweetness that resembles rich fruit cake. Delicious brewed in every method Lamplight is coffee without caffeine or compromise.
We were getting requests for a traditional Italian style espresso. This made us nervous as cheap Italian espresso blends can be bitter from over roasting and cheap robusta.
So we set about making a much higher quality version, an elegant modern interpretation in the Dark Woods style.
The blend starts with specialty arabicas from South America and India. Finally, we add in the very best quality robusta from the award-winning Harley Estate in India. It’s just mid roast resulting in a smooth rich bodied espresso that will make people reassess this style.
El Ata is our “house” Colombian coffee, grown in the shadow of the majestic Nevada del Huila, by the banks of the meandering Ata River. It’s the river and the rich volcanic soils, along with the skills of the farmers, that help make this such an exceptional coffee.
Our friends in the industry are kind to us. This network of producers and distributors, often at origin, ensures that we have regular access to some of the most interesting and high quality lots and micro-lots available anywhere. Sometimes limited to just one sack and always sold seasonally these coffees represent stunning examples of terroir, varietals or process.
Though we are firm believers in the inherent virtues of blending coffees for espresso brewing, when appropriate we will also seek to use our specials range to highlight the potential complexity and unique character of single estate espresso.
New coffees are added bi-monthly and often sell out quickly.
Buy now
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Our friends in the industry are kind to us. This network of producers and distributors, often at origin, ensures that we have regular access to some of the most interesting and high quality lots and micro-lots available anywhere. Sometimes limited to just one sack and always sold seasonally these coffees represent stunning examples of terroir, varietals or process.
Though we are firm believers in the inherent virtues of blending coffees for espresso brewing, when appropriate we will also seek to use our specials range to highlight the potential complexity and unique character of single estate espresso.
New coffees are added bi-monthly and often sell out quickly.
Buy now
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© Darkwoods Coffee Ltd, 2024