Expanding Our Coffee Story: Why We're Exploring Washed Coffees from Three Continents
For the past year, Pattern's coffee journey has been rooted in one place: Colombia's Sierra Nevada region. We became known for our natural-processed Colombian coffees - those fruity, naturally sweet beans that arrive at your door with the kind of complexity you don't need to sweeten. They taste like vanilla. Like ripe berries. Like someone gave the beans permission to be themselves.
We're still obsessed with those coffees. But we've realised something important: our discerning customers want more stories, not just variations on one.
The natural processing narrative
If you've been following us, you know we chose natural processing deliberately. It's the opposite of industrial. The coffee cherry dries whole around the bean - a slower, riskier process that only works when you have the climate and expertise to back it up. Sierra Nevada has both. The result is those signature fruity, wine-like notes that made our customers fall in love in the first place.
Natural processing is beautiful. But it's also singular. One processing method. One region. One flavour story playing on repeat.
Why we're now exploring washed coffees
Washed processing is the coffee world's rebuttal to natural: remove the fruit immediately, then ferment the bean in water tanks. The result? Cleaner acidity, brighter flavour clarity, and a completely different expression of the same coffee plant.
It's not "better." It's a different conversation.
And it turns out our community want to have that conversation. Over the past three months, we've received requests for fruity coffee beans with clarity, for naturally sweet Ethiopian coffees with floral notes, for Colombia's other regions - places we'd dismissed because they weren't Sierra Nevada.
So we listened. And we started sourcing.
Ecuador, Ethiopia and The Rest of Colombia - the washed story
Ecuador: Where subtlety meets sweetness
Ecuadorian washed coffees occupy a sweet spot between two worlds. They carry the fruit-forward DNA we know from natural processing, but with the brightness and acidity clarity that washed processing brings. Think stone fruit. Chocolate. A coffee that tastes sweet without any added sugar.
We're sourcing from smaller producers at elevation - the kind of farmers who've been passing their land through families for generations. These aren't blends. These are single-origin coffees that are genuinely tasty because the grower's name is behind them.
Ethiopia: The origin point, reimagined
Ethiopia is where coffee grows wild. Where processing methods feel less like industrial techniques and more like tradition. Washed Ethiopian coffees are the genre's wild card: floral, complex, sometimes delicate enough to surprise you.
Our Ethiopian washed coffees come with flavour notes that read like a wine tasting sheet. Jasmine Tea. Vibrant pink grapefruit. Sweet Cherry and rich butterscotch. These are the naturally fruity coffee beans that also have clean, bright acidity - the ones that work brilliantly if you like your coffee with real clarity.
Colombia: Our familiar friend, new expression
We're not abandoning Sierra Nevada's natural-processed excellence. We're adding to the conversation. Colombian washed coffees from different regions - places like Nariño and Huila, show the coffee plant's incredible diversity. Same country, same coffee plant, completely different results.
The washed coffees from Colombia's other regions tend toward chocolate and nuts and caramel - the kind of flavours that make naturally sweet coffee beans feel dessert-like. They work equally well in a filter or espresso.
What this means for you
We're still Pattern. We still believe in single-origin coffees, in sourcing relationships, in coffees that taste like something. We still judge quality by flavour, not by a commodity grade.
What's changing is the breadth of your options. If you loved our Sierra Nevada natural-processed coffees, these washed versions offer a different kind of discovery. Same regions, reimagined. New regions, introduced properly.
We're exploring. Testing. Bringing in coffees from producers we'd be genuinely excited to recommend at a dinner party, not because they fit a category, but because they're tasty.