The story behind our new Mexican Light Roast.
Catfight has a new coffee and it just may surprise a lot of you. There are a lot of mythes about light roast coffee which we will discuss. But, let's talk about WHY we are excited for our new Cleopatra light roast first.
Our Cleopatra light roast is our first coffee where we did a direct trade purchase with a farming community in Nayarita Mexico, rather than our distributer. A distributor acts as a middle man...or one of several middle men. In short, there's nothing wrong with buying from a distributer and we will continue to do so because ours is awesome. One of the upsides to the distributor is that they sample the coffee and vet them before making offerings to us buyers. They also protect the buyer in the event of any issues with the beans or the shipment. As you can see, there's nothing wrong with buying from a good distributor. But, going out on our own, we feel like we just grew several years as a company. We trusted our instinct on what to have the farmers send us and we had to trust the farmers would take care of us. We were a little nervous. It felt like we didn't have our big brother (our distributor) to back us up. But sometimes you need to grow and go at it on your own, which is exactly what we and that is a great feeling. Another good feeling is knowing that all the money paid for the coffee went straight to the farmers. Know that when you purchase this coffee, that it went from a farmer to a bag, shipped here where we roasted it and then sent it to you! That isn't something too many companies can say.
Cherries in Mexico at the beginning stage of being processed.
Similar cherries after being processed-now the green 'beans'.
But none of that matters if we don't like how it tastes. This is where we had turned down several coffees from around the world to be the Catfight Light Roast. We couldn't find one we could put on our website and say, 'Damn right! This is awesome!' Then we discovered this bean! Leave it to Mexico to deliver a full, rich tasty coffee that has a quick finish. This is the perfect coffee to wash down some cinnamon churros.
So, let's dispel the myths about light roast. Light roast coffee doesn't have to be weak or timid. Think of it like this...if a dark roast coffee were a pizza it would be a Chicago Deep Dish with pepperoni. But, a Light Roast might be a nice thin crust margherita with mozzarella cheese and basil. You can get behind that right?
The biggest myth about light roast coffee is the caffeine issue. The rumor is that light roast has LESS caffeine than dark roast. This, is totally false. If it's a good Arabica bean (like ours) roasted with care, it has MORE caffeine naturally than a dark roast. The longer the beans are roasted, the more caffeine is roasted out! So most dark roasts that have 'extra caffeine' add it artificially.
The bottom line is this; Our Cleopatra Light Roast has gone though less hands before you brew it than most other coffees. The less middle men, the quicker it's getting to you-so, it's even fresher. It's naturally processed and tastes amazing. We set out to raise the bar ethically with a coffee that might change peoples minds about light roast and we think we nailed it right on the chin.
