The Future - Wildberry Lemonade

The Future has been a beloved staple on our year-round menu for quite awhile now. With it, we have been able to showcase excellence in processing techniques, particularly in regard to anaerobic and co-fermentation endeavors.. Our goal with each of these unique blends is to elevate flavor as the guiding principle for each creation.

HOW WE GOT HERE | Here in North Carolina, it isn't birds chirping, or flowers blooming, or even temperatures rising, that alerts its inhabitants to the arrival of spring... it's the pollen. We spend weeks wiping our eyes and blowing our noses as we traipse through a pale yellow mist, thankful for the warmer weather but also desperate for some relief from the onslaught of allergy symptoms. Nevertheless, we LOVE spring and wanted to commemorate its arrival with our latest release in The Future series. Though we all agreed that pollen is the pre-eminent symbol of spring in the Carolinas, we thought the folks at home might appreciate it if we settled on some of spring's lovelier aspects as inspiration for this coffee.

Enter: nostalgia. For us, being a kid in springtime meant picking our own berries and eating them straightaway, stuffing our cheeks and staining our hands. It also meant sipping lemonade with our grandparents, or occasionally even selling it in our neighborhood cul-de-sac. And of course, it meant flowers. Planting them, picking them, smelling them, running through a field of them. We wanted to honor all of those bits of nostalgia with this coffee, and the culmination of those sense memories led us to something truly delightful: Wildberry Lemonade.

HOW WE DID IT | Crafting this ode to spring was a joy in and of itself, and we eventually landed on a blend of three co-fermented coffees and one Red Bourbon lot:

• 35% Brayan Alvear - Lemon Bourbon
• 35% Las Flores - Red Bourbon
• 20% Sebastián Ramirez - Lemongrass Pink Bourbon
• 10% Jairo Arcila - Dragon Fruit

TAKE A SIP | Spring is in the air, and it's also in this cup! Vibrant and refreshing, there's a ton of flavor movement as you sip. Sebastián Ramirez's lemongrass co-ferment contributes big floral characteristics at the top, similar to floral, citrusy hops (like mosaic hops). The play between complex citrus and tropical fruit notes is intensified by the lemon and dragon fruit co-fermented lots, reminding us of mixed berries and fruit cocktail. The Las Flores lot contributes further complexity and stone fruit characteristics, leaving us with a truly vibrant cup of coffee that rivals even the loveliest of roadside wildflower blooms this time of year.