Quarantine coffee #2 - Assembly Coffee Roasters

Here is (with much delay) the second round of quarantine coffee - a series of posts where I explore my experiences with different coffee roasters around London. I comment on their ordering process (damn quarantine), flavours of the coffees, or any grievances or particularities regarding said coffee and/or the roaster. My goal this quarantine was to explore as many coffee roasters as I possibly could to both try different things and support the local economy as much as I can. Having said that, I’m in no way a coffee expert nor am I invested in speciality coffee so take what you read here with a grain of salt :)

This time, I managed to get my hands on two coffees from much-acclaimed Assembly Roasters from Brixton. So far, I had mixed feelings with their coffees - they were either an absolute hit or a complete flop. On their website, they provide many choices, but I settled for two naturally processed coffees - Colombia and Honduras. I had limited experience with natural processed coffees from South America (I’ve only done extensive testing on African varieties though), so this was a welcome experiment.

The first thing to note is that Assembly’s prices are relatively fair and the ordering process was pretty painless. The coffees, however, are not roasted to order (unlike Square Mile or Colonna that roast them after the order is placed). This meant Columbia was two weeks old and Honduras almost a month old by the time it came to my doors. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed by that, but given the variety they offer, I guess that is a tradeoff they had to make. The second thing is the packaging -t is gorgeous. Everything from the semi-translucent bags, to the custom art on the label, is incredibly aesthetically pleasing. The bags I got were very hard to open - I had to use some pliers and screwdrivers to get it done, so it is clearly "form over function". They are SOOO pretty though, so I quickly forgave them that.

The overall impression however sadly reflects my previous experience with Assembly. On the one hand, El Encanto from Colombia had dominant nutty notes with slight fruitiness at lower temperatures and a very sweet finish. On the other hand, La Mora from Honduras was in my opinion a complete disaster. No matter the recipe or the method used, it was bitter and astringent, almost as if the roasting process had gone wrong. Or it could be that it was simply stale, as it was roasted a month before I had made some. In any event, it was interesting to try both of them, but I'd not get the one from Honduras again.

So in the end, would I recommend Assembly. Well in short, yes. Despite them not roasting to order (which I find annoying at best), the ease of use of their website, and the variety of coffees they store means that a consumer has a perfect platform for testing different coffees with wildly different roasting profiles. And as I’ve said, when they get it right, they get it really right. That Columbia was good.