Under the Water Pillow at El Fénix

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

One of the things Miguel and I talked about at El Fénix was how well the water-pillow coffees had held as they cooled. We had been tasting them for around forty-five minutes; they were very cold by then, and still lovely. I wanted to understand what he was doing in fermentation that might help explain that, so our conversation moved from what we were tasting to what was happening beneath a sheet of plastic.

El Fénix, in Calarcá, Quindío, was our base for this part of my Colombia trip. I have written about arriving there after Santuario, but spending time with Miguel Fajardo Mendoza also gave me the opportunity to get into the detail of his work: what he chose to plant, what he wanted from the coffee, and how he worked towards it in processing. Sidra brought those conversations together, because his interest in it began well before there was anything to ferment.

Diana standing beside fermentation vessels in the processing area at El Fénix.
A close view of a plastic-lined fermentation vessel and the liquid held in it.
At the fermentation tanks at El Fénix.

Why He Planted Sidra

Miguel wanted to try a different variety at El Fénix, and the opportunity came through a seed exchange with a friend. Miguel had Wush Wush seed; his friend had Sidra seed brought from Ecuador. What interested him was the combination of an exciting cup profile and good productivity. That combination mattered because the Sidra was going into space previously planted with Geisha, and he had been thinking carefully about what he wanted that part of the farm to produce.

Geisha comes with quite a benchmark. As Miguel explained it, there was always the comparison with Panamanian Geisha, while El Fénix had different growing conditions and different resources. He wanted a coffee that suited the environment he was actually working in, with a flavour identity of its own and a yield that made sense for the farm. I liked hearing him talk about that choice. There is so much excitement around a variety’s name that it is easy to miss the much more interesting conversation about why someone has decided to grow it.

These were young Sidra plantings, and in our conversation Miguel described them going through their first harvest cycle. He talked about managing their height and branches, encouraging new growth and looking towards what they could produce as they developed. There was a lot of potential in those trees, but also a lot of care ahead of them. The cup was part of his reason for planting Sidra, and so was the possibility of continuing to produce it well, year after year.

Coffee cherries at several ripeness stages growing on a branch.
White coffee blossom and developing cherries on a branch at El Fénix.
Coffee cherries and blossom at El Fénix.

Under the Sheet

That practical thinking was there in the processing layout Mat showed us, too. He explained the way the terrain could be used to move coffee down through the system, from the upper receiving points towards the pulpers, taking advantage of gravity and keeping access from the plantation in mind. There was attention to what could be built with the materials available and how people would work around it. Miguel’s explanation of the water pillow had a similar directness: it was a method he wanted to be useful in different vessels and different places.

A visitor beside metal channels and processing equipment beneath the open-sided roof at El Fénix.
The processing area at El Fénix.

In his description, the coffee ferments with its mucilage beneath a plastic sheet, with roughly fifteen to twenty centimetres of water held above the sheet. Miguel explained that the water acts as a heat sink, helping to stabilise the fermentation temperature; he described an environment around twenty to twenty-two degrees Celsius in their conditions. The arrangement reduces the air available around the coffee while allowing fermentation gases to leave, creating what he calls an almost anaerobic environment. They also let the fermentation juices drain from the stationary tank, rather than leaving them collected at the bottom.

What he wants from that environment is a bright but delicate acidity, with complexity and enough balance for the variety to remain expressive. He spoke about being able to influence the fermentation without adding other ingredients, and about the usefulness of a setup that can be adapted to a cement tank or a plastic vessel. That helped me understand why he was interested in the method beyond any one coffee. He was looking for a way of working that could produce the kind of cup he wanted and be practical to repeat.

Still from a video showing a hand examining the water held inside a plastic-lined fermentation vessel.
A closer look at the sheet-and-water setup.

A Batch Still Has to Be Watched

Of course, having a method doesn’t remove the decisions that come with each batch. In one of the tanks Miguel was showing us, water had been added to the coffee to cool and hold it ahead of washing the following day. This was a separate adjustment to that batch, rather than the water held above the plastic sheet. He talked us through the aromas and the activity still visible at the surface, explaining how he was judging its progress. Cooling it down had not made everything stop, and washing it and getting it out to dry still had to fit around the farm’s working week.

The same conversation carried on into drying. Miguel explained that the route could change with the amount of coffee moving through the farm and what needed to be delivered. Coffee might spend longer on the drying beds, or begin there and finish in the mechanical dryer when the flow of work or an order required it. He was describing decisions made around the coffee and the circumstances in front of him. Listening to him move between the batch, the drying space and the people doing the work gave me a much fuller picture than a fermentation time on its own could have done.

A farm building and coffee-covered hillside beneath low cloud at El Fénix.
El Fénix in the clouds.

That was what I enjoyed about these conversations with Miguel: the detail of the cup stayed connected to the work needed to produce it. The Sidra had to make sense as a planting, the fermentation had to move towards the flavour he wanted, and there had to be a way to wash and dry the coffee with the people, space and time available. When we came back to those cups that had stayed so enjoyable as they cooled, there was all of that behind them. I wanted to understand the water pillow, and I came away understanding a good deal more about how Miguel thinks about his coffee.

The Coffee That Wasn’t on the Table

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

When I last wrote about our Colombia trip, we were up at Pedacito de Cielo with Miguel, Andrea and Guadalupe, getting to know the Pink Bourbon trees planted when she was born. We were staying down at El Fénix during those days in Calarcá, Quindío, and between the visits there was also a cupping to prepare for. Before we could sit down to taste, though, there was quite a collection of samples to roast, and that is where this story begins.

Mat North asked whether I wanted to do some sample roasting, which I was very happy to do. The little roasters each behaved slightly differently, so getting a consistent set of samples ready in time for the cupping took a bit of care. In the end, I roasted all the samples for the table, while the Sidra I had my eye on was still out on the drying beds.

Diana working at the sample roaster beside the open window at El Fénix.
Miguel and another visitor examining green coffee samples at a wooden table.
Sample roasting and looking through coffees at El Fénix.

A Little Too Polite

There was a lovely Geisha on that table, among other coffees I would happily have brought into Roastersaurus. There was also a friend on the trip who was considerably quicker than I was at putting his name down for the ones he wanted. I was doing that very polite thing of letting someone else choose, then realising that being very polite is not necessarily the most effective way to buy coffee. He knew what he wanted and said so. I could hardly fault him for that.

I had been firmer about Guadalupe’s Pink Bourbon. That coffee grows at Pedacito de Cielo, Miguel and Andrea’s own farm above El Fénix, and I had tasted a sample before coming to Colombia. I was excited about its potential and had already put my name down for it. Nobody was fighting me for it at that point, although there was rather more appreciation for that choice later. Guada was coming home with me, and I was very happy about that.

But there was another coffee I had been keeping in mind. We had seen some of the Sidra processing during our visit and talked about the water pillow technique, so I knew there was Sidra at El Fénix even though it hadn’t reached our cupping table. Later, when I asked Miguel about it, he told me it was still drying. I may have joked that he didn’t need to tell everyone. Cheeky, yes, although it was already too late for it to join the group cupping anyway. I was still very interested in finding out what it could be.

After the Group Cupping

Most of the others had flights the following morning, while mine wasn’t until the evening. That gave me more time at El Fénix, and I had wanted some time with Miguel to ask more questions and get a little further into what he was doing. After all the roasting, cupping and choosing, it felt like the quiet after the storm. There was still a Sidra on the drying beds, and now there was an opportunity to spend some proper time with it.

The next morning, I asked whether we could taste it. Miguel and I went down to the drying beds and took a sample of the coffee in parchment, while the rest of the lot continued drying. We brought it to the small mill, but getting a sample ready to roast became a much fuller lesson. Miguel took me through the assessment of the coffee, including screening and weighing, and explained how those results connect to the way coffee is bought and sold in Colombia. I had asked to cup a coffee and was getting a very good reason not to rush towards the cup.

A raised coffee-drying bed at El Fénix with a handwritten Sidra label.
A handful of coffee in parchment above a drying bed.
The drying beds, and coffee still in parchment.

As he explained the milling loss, or merma, and the different screen selections, we could follow what remained from the parchment sample and how much green coffee was available under a particular preparation. That led us into the factor calculation: how much parchment would be needed to produce the required amount of usable green coffee. Miguel showed me how that yield fed into buying and pricing decisions, and how changing the preparation changed the calculation. Having the sample there, working through it with him, made the relationship between those numbers much easier to see. What we kept or separated changed the quantity in that preparation, and therefore what was being priced.

Still from a video of coffee being milled into a container at El Fénix.
Hands working through green coffee in a screening tray.
A green sample tray holding green coffee alongside darker separated material.
Milling the sample, screening the green coffee and looking at the separated fractions.

From the Drying Bed to the Cup

Eventually, we roasted and cupped the sample, and I loved it. I had been interested enough to ask about the Sidra before tasting it, but this was the point at which I chose it for Roastersaurus. We had taken a sample from a coffee that was still drying, milled and assessed it, roasted it and finally tasted it together. By then, Miguel had shown me a great deal more than the coffee’s potential in the cup; I had spent time with the decisions and work that brought it there.

The flavour notes I developed later, roasting and tasting it back in London, belong to that later part of the story. Across those tastings there was red and pink fruit, lychee, lemon balm and rose-like florals, with lovely weight and texture and passionfruit carrying on through the aftertaste. That long finish became an important part of its identity: Tropical. Rose. Afterglow. Those are the words that found their way onto the card, after the coffee had made its way from El Fénix to my roaster.

For El Fénix Sidra, Caitlin, @kitsukaizen, turned our Archaeopteryx into a phoenix, and it became Roastersaurus’s first-ever shiny Archaeopteryx card. When I look at it, I still think about the coffee that hadn’t made it onto the shared table and the morning I had left with Miguel. I’m very glad I asked about the Sidra, and very glad my flight wasn’t until the evening.

Choosing the coffee was only part of the conversation with Miguel, and in the next blog I’ll get into why he planted Sidra at El Fénix and how he uses the water pillow to shape its fermentation. Watch this space for Under the Water Pillow at El Fénix, coming soon.

After Santuario, Into Quindío

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

After Santuario, the road carried us into Quindío.

The Avelino coffees had already opened one part of the Colombia trip for Roastersaurus: the blind table at Santuario, the blue barrels, the small farm, and the strange little magic of two coffees from the same producer becoming two completely different creatures. Those stories are there if you want to follow the path back, but this one begins where that chapter leaves us, with the trip still moving and the next coffee starting to gather itself long before I knew what card it would become.


At that point, Quindío meant El Fénix to me, or at least that was the name I had in my head before I arrived. I knew it through Raw Material Colombia, through coffees that had crossed cupping tables, and through Mat North talking about the place, the people, and especially Miguel Fajardo Mendoza. There is a difference between hearing a name often enough that it becomes familiar and finally arriving somewhere with your own body, seeing the slope of it, the texture of it, the way people move through it, and realising that the name was only ever the outside edge of the thing.

El Fénix holds a lot of coffee threads at once: rare varieties, producer relationships, training, processing, experimentation, and Raw Material’s wider work in Colombia around making quality more possible and more valuable. Being there made that feel less like a concept and more like a working place, full of practical care and constant conversation. It also meant finally meeting Miguel properly, not just as a name attached to coffees and projects, but as someone whose attention seemed to sit everywhere at once: with the programme, with the producers, with the processing, with the land, and with the people moving through it.


That matters for Guadalupe’s Pink Bourbon because the coffee is connected to El Fénix, but it is not an El Fénix coffee. El Fénix is part of the route into the story: it is where I was staying for this part of the trip, where Miguel works in and around the Raw Material Colombia world, and where the Pink Bourbon seedlings for this lot came from. But the coffee itself grows higher up, at Pedacito de Cielo, Miguel and Andrea’s own home farm above it.

Before we went up there, though, Quindío gave me another piece of the story, and it came through a school.


Miguel had been invited to a planting at Institución Educativa Baudilio Montoya, in vereda La Bella, Calarcá, where the school and the Comité de Cafeteros were beginning a project called Integración Generacional Quindío-Calarcá. The idea was not just to tell young people that coffee mattered, but to let them work through the reality of it: seedlings in the ground, technical support, agronomy, cultivation, and eventually the possibility of taking coffee all the way through to commercialisation. The Comité de Cafeteros had donated 1,000 coffee seedlings, along with guamo and other materials, and the first planting began with 200 of those seedlings going into the soil.


We were there for that beginning, and a few of us spoke to the students gathered in the assembly hall: Miguel, Mat, and me. The students were around fifteen or sixteen, old enough to understand that coffee is not just a romantic landscape in the distance, but work, weather, money, family, land, risk, and choice. I spoke in Spanish as a Mexican roaster in Colombia, from the buying side of the chain, and told them plainly that there is a future in coffee; that we want to buy good coffee from young producers who choose to build it; that the work happening on farms in Quindío can reach cups, shops, and customers far from where the trees are planted.


Specialty coffee talks about the future all the time in abstract terms: prices, varieties, climate, quality, market access, sustainability. All of that matters, of course it does. But in that assembly hall, the future of coffee was not abstract. It was sitting right in front of us. The question in that room was whether coffee would feel like a life those students could build with, or something they would need to move away from, and a young person cannot choose a future they have never seen made possible. That was the point of being there: to make the route visible from seedling to market, from a school project in Calarcá to people on the other side of the world who care where their coffee comes from.

Then we planted trees, which can sound almost too neat as symbolism until you are actually doing it. Then it is simply soil, hands, young plants, and a group of people putting something small into the ground because they believe it might become something.


There were other pieces of the chain around that part of the trip as well. We spent time looking at dry milling, seeing more of what happens after coffee leaves the farm and before it becomes something I can roast back in London. That part of the chain deserves its own attention, but even as a glimpse it added to the feeling of Quindío as a place where different parts of coffee were sitting very close together: farming, processing, training, milling, exporting, learning, and then, eventually, a cup.

Through all of this, Miguel kept coming into clearer focus.


I had spent time with him at El Fénix, but the story changed when we went up toward Pedacito de Cielo. The farm sits above El Fénix, and the videos from that day make me laugh because you can hear us breathing hard. It was not a polished little origin-content moment. It was slope and altitude and legs doing the work, and by the time the view opened out, the name made sense.

Pedacito de Cielo means piece of sky.

It really does feel like that. The farm sits high on the hillside above everything, and Miguel’s house is there with coffee planted around it. We went to spend time with the family, not just to look at a lot. I met Andrea, Guadalupe, the cats, the dog. We sat together, had a little bottle of wine with the group, and it felt less like being shown a production site and more like being invited into someone’s home.


Guadalupe was wearing dinosaur clothes when I visited, which is the kind of detail Roastersaurus cannot be trusted to behave normally around, but even before the card existed, the real story was already there. Miguel and Andrea planted 4,000 Pink Bourbon trees at Pedacito de Cielo in August 2023, at the same time their daughter Guadalupe was born. They call her Guada for short. The seedlings came from El Fénix, selected because Miguel had seen strong productivity and very good taste, and then planted around the family home.

That is why the school visit stayed attached to this coffee in my mind. Miguel spoke about wanting coffee to be part of Guadalupe’s future, not as a burden passed down because that is simply what families do, but as possibility: a beautiful farm, a long-lasting family business, a crop valued for its quality, and a way of being connected to people all over the world who drink what you grow and care where it came from.

By then, the wider El Fénix story had narrowed into Miguel’s own. This was no longer only about a project, a region, or the systems around coffee. It was about a home on a hillside, coffee planted around it, and Pink Bourbon trees that had gone into the ground the year his daughter was born.


Guadalupe’s Pink Bourbon is a traditional washed coffee. Miguel processed it simply, without long or extended fermentation, because he wanted to understand the variety and the terroir first. The first main harvest is expected in October 2026, so this release is small by nature: a pre-main-harvest picking, a first taste of what those young trees are beginning to offer.

In the cup, it moves through red and pink fruit, soft florals, stone fruit, and a cool cucumber-melon finish. Pimm’s. Garden. Party. But underneath that brightness is the part that made the whole thing feel so Roastersaurus: first fruits, for Guada.

I did not know, standing there, that Guadalupe would become a Raptor. I only knew that the coffee was beginning somewhere very personal, in a place that already felt full of story, and that up at Pedacito de Cielo, before the main harvest had even arrived, its first fruits were already starting to speak.


The lore page goes deeper into the card, the artwork, the name, the river of love, and how this coffee became a Quickfang Raptor. For now, I wanted to place it back on the road where I found it: after Santuario, into Quindío, through El Fénix, and up to a little piece of sky.

Guadalupe’s Pink Bourbon is now live, in very small quantities, with each 225g pack including the illustrated Roastersaurus Raptor card.

Avelino and the Blue Barrels

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

Finca El Guadual, remonta washed coffee, and two timelines from one small farm

On the drive out from Santuario towards Vereda La Linda, the road wound away from town and back into the green, and somewhere along it the coffees began to feel less like bowls on a table and more like part of a place.

By then, I had already met Avelino, but only briefly, back in the cupping lab the day before. We had spent the day moving between tables, breaking for food, drifting back in to taste a little more, and at some point, somewhere in the middle or towards the end of all that, he came in. I think he had been in town dropping off coffee, which would make sense. It is a long drive in from La Linda, so a trip into Santuario is never just one thing. Someone introduced him and said, almost casually, that this was Avelino, the producer behind the coffees I had kept returning to.

I asked a little about them and got the simplest version first: same producer, same farm, same process, but one had fermented longer than the other. We did not go much further than that. Everyone was tired, I was a bit shy, and we were going to see his farm the next day anyway.

So when we headed out the following morning, I was carrying those coffees with me. I already knew how they had felt in the cup, one bright and lifted, the other deeper and more cola-like, and I already knew they had come from the same hands. What I did not know yet was what kind of place had made them, or how that difference had been shaped.

There was a stream on the way out, running through all that green, and it pulled me back to what we had been told in Santuario about Tatamá: a place of water, mountains, protected land, and coffee. Santuario had already been described to us as La Perla de Tatamá, but on that road the phrase stopped sounding like background information and became the actual panaramic view from the back of the truck.

The coffees stop being cups on a table or numbers on a sample list and become part of a physical world. They belong to a road, a stream, a hillside, a small farm in Vereda La Linda, blue barrels, roof drying, changing weather, cherry selection, and one person doing the work himself. Also, as it turned out, a dog called Chiki, who seemed fairly convinced the whole operation belonged to him.

Finca El Guadual

Finca El Guadual is a small farm in Vereda La Linda, in Santuario. It is only around a hectare, which changes the feel of the whole visit. This is not a big estate story. It is one person, one small piece of land, and a process built through repetition, attention, and knowing the coffee very closely.

Avelino does it all himself. That becomes obvious very quickly when you are there. The farm does not feel separated into neat categories of picking, processing, and drying with different people attached to each part. It feels held together by one person moving through all of it, making decisions as the day asks for them.

His daughter was there too, following him around in that very particular way children do when someone is clearly their hero. It was charming to watch, but it also stayed with me because it made the whole place feel less like a process description and more like a living inheritance. Finca El Guadual was not only Avelino’s work in the present. It also carried a quiet sense of future.

That is one of the things I loved about visiting. You can talk about fermentation days, barrels, and process names from a distance, but standing there on the farm makes it much more human. The numbers are not floating around on a spec sheet. They belong to someone’s daily decisions: what is ripe today, what can be picked, what goes into the barrel, how the weather is behaving, how the coffee is developing, and when it needs to move.

How the lot takes shape

One of the things that became clearer on the farm was that these coffees do not begin with a fermentation number. They begin with Avelino deciding what is actually ready to be picked.

Across his small farm, he is working with three varieties, Colombia, Caturra, and Supremo, and he gathers the coffee in small amounts as the cherry reaches the right level of maturation. That matters here because these coffees are not built from one giant, static batch that gets sealed away and left alone. They take shape over time, as ripe cherry comes in and the lot is built in stages.

Once picked, the coffee gets a short fermentation in cherry, usually 12 to 24 hours depending on maturation, before it is pulped and moved into the sealed blue barrels for anaerobic remonta fermentation. Those barrels are now part of the visual world of this release for a reason. They are where the same farm, same producer, and same process begin to separate into different expressions.

During the remonta fermentation, the barrels are rotated every 24 hours. That rotation moves the coffee’s own mucilage-rich fermenting liquid back through the lot as it develops. It is one of the details that helps explain why these coffees have fermentation character without feeling like fermentation has swallowed the cup whole. There is movement through the process, but there is also control.

Because the lots are built from small daily collections, the coffee pulped first can reach around 15, 17, or 18 days of fermentation, while the last coffee pulped may reach around 9 or 10 days. After fermentation, Avelino washes the coffee using the lavador before it moves to drying.

On paper, that could sound messy. Standing on the farm, it felt like the opposite. What became obvious very quickly was that Avelino is not throwing time at the coffee and hoping for the best. He has standardised what he does through repetition and close attention, and the result is a process that feels held rather than improvised. That matters, because long fermentation does not automatically mean good coffee, and it definitely does not automatically mean clean coffee. What makes these cups work is not the numbers on their own, but the fact that the process is being guided by someone who knows exactly what he is looking for.

For the release, the two expressions we selected became the 10 day and 19 day lots, with the named day marking the longest point in each one. Same producer, same farm, same remonta washed process, with time as the variable.

Roof drying and the reality of Santuario

After washing, the coffee is dried on the roof for around 8 days.

This is another part of the story that feels important because drying is never just a neat line in a process description. In Santuario, weather is part of the reality. Rain can move in, conditions can shift, and small producers have to work with the infrastructure they actually have.

Avelino dries on the roof, adapting around the weather and protecting the coffee via a very cool roof rolling system when needed. The roof is place tracks with wheels, so that it can be brought over the coffee to protect it during pour downs. That kind of detail is not always glamorous, but it is part of what makes the coffee real. The process is not happening in a perfectly controlled fantasy lab. It is happening on a small farm, with one person doing the work, making decisions, responding to the place around him.

That is also why I find the cleanliness of these coffees so impressive. They are fermented, yes. They are expressive, yes. But they are not wild for the sake of being wild. They still feel washed. They still have structure. The fermentation adds sweetness, movement, depth, and personality, but the cups stay clear enough that you can taste the difference between the 10 day and the 19 day without everything becoming one big funky blur.

Chiki, obviously

And then there was Chiki.

I cannot really talk about visiting Finca El Guadual without mentioning the dog, because of course the dog becomes part of the story. Some details are technically important, like fermentation times and drying days. Some details are emotionally important, like the fact that there was a dog there making the whole farm feel even more alive.

Chiki does not explain the cup profile, but Chiki absolutely belongs in the memory of the coffee. That is how origin visits work for me. The technical information matters, but so do the things that fix the place in your mind: the colour of the barrels, the roof where the coffee dries, the sound of the road, the person explaining their process, the dog walking through the scene as if it owns the entire operation.

In a way, those details are part of why I wanted these coffees for Roastersaurus. The release is not only about an interesting fermentation comparison. It is about a small farm that felt vivid enough to build a world around.

Why the pair matters

What makes this release so interesting to me is that the two coffees are not opposites from different worlds. They are two expressions of the same starting point: the same producer, the same farm, the same remonta washed process, with fermentation time as the variable.

That makes them one of the clearest paired tastings I have released through Roastersaurus. The comparison is not about deciding which coffee is better. It is about tasting what time changed.

The 10 day is the faster side of the barrel. It is bright, juicy, lifted, and Raptor-like. The 19 day is the heavier side of the barrel. It has more depth, more pull, more cola-like sweetness, and that T-Rex sense of gravity. Both are clean. Both are fruit-forward. Both still feel connected to the same producer and process.

At London Coffee Festival, it was really lovely watching people taste them side by side. The T-Rex 19 seemed to just about steal the tiny crown for a lot of people, especially as espresso with milk, where that deeper cola sweetness really held its shape. The Raptor 10 had its own kind of magic too, and because it was the smaller lot, it disappeared first.

That is the reality of small releases. Sometimes the brighter side of the story vanishes before the deeper one, and the comparison becomes something you were lucky enough to catch in the moment. The T-Rex 19 is still here for now, carrying the heavier side of the barrel a little longer.

Order Avelino 19 here, while supplies last.

Before I met Avelino

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

Two coffees on a blind table in Santuario

I met these coffees before I met Avelino.

That feels like the right place to start, because the whole release began with taste before it had a name, a farm, a face, or a story attached to it. I was in Santuario, Colombia, cupping coffees from the region after travelling there with Raw Material, and at that point I was just following the table. No producer reveal, no card idea fully formed, no neat little narrative handed over with the samples. Just bowls, spoons, and the question I always come back to with Roastersaurus: is there something here that can become part of the world?

I never wrote one big blog about my Colombia trip, partly because the trip was too full to flatten into one neat travel post. Instead, I think the story is going to come out through the coffees themselves. Each release opens a different part of the trip, and this one starts in Santuario, before I met Avelino.

This trip was not only about buying coffee. It was about understanding where these coffees come from, how they are being produced, and what kind of stories are sitting behind them before they ever land in the UK. I was also wearing more than one hat. Saint Espresso and Roastersaurus are different brands with different needs, and I do not choose coffees for them in the same way. Saint has its own structure, tone, and customer base. Roastersaurus gives me another kind of freedom: to follow curiosity, character, strangeness, play, and those sensory moments that feel like they could turn into a creature.

That does not always mean choosing the loudest coffee on the table. It does not mean chasing the wildest fermentation, the most expensive variety, or the cup that shouts the hardest. Sometimes the right coffee is the one that keeps making you go back to it because there is something there: a shape, a movement, a feeling, a little hook in the cup.

Santuario had that feeling.

La Perla de Tatamá

Santuario is known as La Perla de Tatamá, and once you start hearing the story of the place, that name begins to make sense. The municipality sits in the influence of Tatamá National Natural Park, a protected area of around 48,000 hectares that stretches across three departments. Tatamá was described to us as a kind of green lung for the region, connected to the waters that feed towards both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Coffee is not a small side detail in Santuario. It is the main economy of the municipality, with around 5,800 hectares planted in coffee, and Santuario is one of the major coffee-producing municipalities in the department. Most of the municipality is rural, and that matters because coffee here is not separate from daily life. The town, the surrounding farms, the association, the café, the buying station, the conversations, they all sit together.

That wider context helped me understand why Asocafé Tatamá exists in the way it does. Their logo itself pays homage to the park, with the mountains behind it and an endemic frog holding coffee beans. I loved that detail because it says a lot about what the association is trying to hold together: environmental sustainability on one side, and economic sustainability for coffee-producing families on the other.

That balance became one of the threads of the visit. Santuario is beautiful, but this is not a postcard story. It is a coffee town, inside a protected landscape, trying to build something that allows small producers to create more value from the coffee they grow.

Asocafé Tatamá

Asocafé Tatamá began in 2012, partly as a response to the difficulties producers were facing in the coffee sector: low prices, uncertainty in agriculture, and the feeling that coffee was not always working as a profitable industry for the families producing it.

At first, from around 2012 to 2015, the association was focused more on projects that could bring direct support to producers on farm. But the lesson they described was very clear: direct help on its own was not enough to solve the deeper problem. If producers were going to build a more dignified and sustainable life through coffee, the answer had to involve added value and fairer payment for the coffee itself.

So the association started shifting into something more commercial and quality-focused. They built out collection, a basic cupping lab, training, and a structure that could help producers understand coffee beyond the farm gate: processing, cupping, quality, and commercialisation. In 2016, they began collecting coffee and operating with a basic cupping laboratory. Around 2017 to 2018, their relationship with Raw Material helped consolidate larger-volume direct sales and a more stable commercial route.

That matters because the coffees I tasted in Santuario were not sitting on a random table. They were part of a local structure that has been built, step by step, to help producers access feedback, quality assessment, and better routes to market.

A café owned by producers

One of the parts I loved most was the café in town.

Asocafé Tatamá began exploring roasting in 2019, partly because there was not really a local option for producers to roast their own coffee in the municipality. Many producers were used to drinking commercial coffee brands, rather than being able to roast and drink the coffee they had grown themselves.

So the association started roasting. They began with around 500 pounds of coffee, and now roast significantly more for the local market. That step alone feels important, because it gives producers a chance to taste their own work as a finished product, not only as parchment that leaves the farm.

Then they went further and opened a café in Santuario, around 2021 to 2022, with the support of the local government. The idea was to create a coffee shop owned by producers, where the town could taste the best coffees being produced around them.

That is a bigger thing than it sounds.

For people on the consuming side of specialty coffee, tasting origin coffees in a café can feel normal. For producers, especially smallholders, that is not always the case. The coffee can leave the farm as parchment and become something else somewhere far away, tasted by people the producer may never meet. In Santuario, that loop becomes a little shorter. The coffee comes back into the cup, in the town where it was grown.

I had also been asked to bring a coffee from another country, so I brought Basha Bekele from Ethiopia, one of my Roastersaurus releases. It was brewed in the café, and local customers, producers, and producer families tasted it. There was something very special about that: an Ethiopian coffee from my world being tasted in a Colombian coffee town, by people whose own coffees were also being tasted and shared in that same space.

That is exactly the kind of exchange that makes coffee feel bigger than buying and selling. It becomes a way of expanding reference points, sharing quality, and letting people taste beyond the borders of their own production.

Building the value chain locally

The association has kept building from there. They have moved into small-lot export, helping coffees from the region reach clients in different parts of the world, especially where smaller lots and microlots need a more direct route. They have exported containers, but their strength seems to sit especially in smaller lots, the kind of coffees that can be difficult to move through more conventional structures.

They are also investing in more infrastructure: dry milling, roasting, and a fuller processing line that can keep more of the value chain connected to Santuario. I do not want this blog to become a machinery catalogue, but it matters because it shows the direction of travel. This is not an association sitting still. It is trying to build a fuller ecosystem around coffee: collection, quality control, roasting, café culture, export, and now more infrastructure to support that growth.

That was the world around the table when I cupped Avelino’s coffees.

Back on the sample roaster

After visiting the space and seeing more of how the buying station works, we were given a group of green samples to roast and cup. This was also a little personal joy for me, because before Saint and before Roastersaurus, I spent almost five years working in green coffee. A big part of my job was tasting and evaluating coffees, and another big part was roasting those coffees so they could be assessed properly.

So being handed samples in Santuario and getting to sample roast again felt like stepping back into an old rhythm, but in a completely different setting.

Most of the other roasters I was with had not sample roasted on a small sample barrel roaster before, so I got to show them how I approach that style of sample roasting while we roasted through the coffees for the table. It was one of those small trip moments that probably sounds very simple from the outside, but felt genuinely fun: a bit of practical knowledge, a bit of shared curiosity, and the build-up before everyone gets their spoons into the bowls.

Then we cupped.

There were a lot of coffees on the table, and of course there were several that people liked. That is always the strange little social theatre of sourcing: everyone quietly finding what they love, hoping no one else has fallen in love with the exact same thing, trying to work out what is possible, what is available, and what makes sense.

For Roastersaurus, I also had another thought in mind. I did not want to split a microlot if I could avoid it. I wanted to bring back something that would be unique to my customers, something that would not simply appear in several other places at the same time. That meant I did not necessarily chase every coffee that scored well or attracted attention. I was looking for the ones that felt right, and that I could actually keep whole for this release.

Two coffees kept pulling me back.

One was bright, juicy, fresh, and full of energy. It had this red fruit brightness, a clean lift, and a kind of speed in the cup that immediately made me think Raptor. The other was still fruity, but deeper. More cola-like, more pulled into sweetness, with something darker and more grounded. That one felt like it was moving toward T-Rex.

At the time, I did not know they were connected. I only knew I wanted both.

The reveal

The reveal

When I asked about the coffees, the whole thing suddenly became much more interesting.

Both were from the same producer: Avelino Mena. They came from the same farm, through the same remonta washed process, but they did not feel the same in the cup. The difference was time.

At that moment, the cards did not exist yet. The mirror artwork did not exist yet. The Raptor and the T-Rex were only just starting to form in my head from the way the coffees moved on the table.

That is one of my favourite parts of Roastersaurus. The dinosaurs are not assigned afterwards as decoration. They have to come from the coffee. The class, the stats, the skill, the artwork, all of it needs to make sense from what is happening in the cup and from the story around it.

At that stage, all I really knew was that I had found two coffees I could not leave behind.

The rest came later, at Avelino’s farm.

White Sabertooth

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

Las Margaritas Honey Geisha, Colombia

This coffee came in for my birthday, and I knew quite quickly it was the one I wanted to release.

Not just because it was beautiful, but because it connected back to something much earlier. Over a decade ago, I used a Geisha from one of the Café Granja La Esperanza farms in one of my first major competitions. I still remember how clearly it stood apart. It was one of those coffees that quietly shifts your understanding of what coffee can be.

This lot came from Las Margaritas, one of those same farms. Returning to it now didn’t feel nostalgic so much as continuous, like picking up a thread that had been sitting there for years.

When I tasted the coffee, it felt composed from the beginning. Strawberry moved into guava and papaya, softening into banana and custard apple, with jasmine and lavender lifting through the cup without becoming sharp. The sweetness carried all the way through, honeyed, settled, and very long.

Everything moved together.

That feeling of control and precision is what led to the creature.

The White Sabertooth sits within the Mythic class alongside the Microraptor, part of the same prehistoric lineage, but with a very different presence. Not a dinosaur, but something that still belongs naturally within that ancient world. A creature built on patience and exactness rather than force. It observes first. Then moves fully.

Illustrated by @kitsukaizen, she sits at the Las Margaritas waterfall, taken directly from the farm itself. Golden-eyed, composed, deliberate. There is a stillness to her, but not passivity. More a sense that everything is already understood before anything happens.

This release marked the arrival of a new creature into Roastersaurus.

The coffee itself was honey processed, with controlled mucilage left on during drying. That choice gave the cup its cohesion, building texture without heaviness and allowing transitions between flavours to feel seamless rather than segmented. At this level, Geisha doesn’t need exaggeration. The process supports the coffee rather than reshaping it.

Preorders for White Sabertooth moved quickly and the release sold through shortly after launch. Each pack carried the Mythic White Sabertooth card, tied specifically to this moment.

Some coffees stay with you because of how they taste.

Others stay with you because of where they sit in your life.

This one does both.

Kinini Anaerobic: Stability Through Intention

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

By February, winter feels different.

It’s no longer cosy. It’s grey and damp. In London especially, the light flattens and the days blur. You start craving something brighter. I know many people across Europe feel the same at this point in the year.

For me, coffee becomes a form of travel. A way of shifting climate without leaving the room.

Kinini Anaerobic feels like a tropical holiday in winter. Vibrant fruit rises clearly, sweetness follows, and everything settles into calm balance. It brings colour back into grey days. Expressive, but grounded. Complex, but integrated.

It’s also a coffee that carries a longer journey.

Steady.
Built to endure.

I first encountered Kinini while I was Head of Quality at DR Wakefield. DR Wakefield has long worked with the washing station, and that’s how I met Jackie Turner and learned the story behind the project directly from her.

At the time, we were buying washed lots. There was no anaerobic yet. The focus was clarity, structure, and steady development. Jackie spoke about building something sustainable, something that could stand on its own rather than rely on donation cycles. Coffee was never meant to be a side project. It was the future.

Then the naturals began to appear. That shift was exciting. It showed experimentation and confidence. It showed a project that was growing.

Kinini itself grew from A New Beginning, founded in 2008 to support widows and orphans affected by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Jackie was instrumental in shaping its transition into a sustainable coffee enterprise in 2012. Instead of remaining dependent on short-term relief, the project evolved into a system built on quality, trade, and long-term stability.

Ten percent of profits continue to fund local education and healthcare initiatives, but the deeper impact lies in the model itself. Farmers earn through quality. Infrastructure grows through value. Progress is built through consistency.

That philosophy has always resonated with me. Doing good in coffee should not feel like charity marketing. It should feel like competence, dignity, and longevity.

When the team at DR Wakefield reached out this year to say they had something new from Kinini that finally felt ready, an anaerobic lot refined over several seasons, it felt aligned. Not just because of the cup, but because of that arc.

Whole cherries are sealed inside GrainPro bags for anaerobic fermentation, creating a controlled, oxygen-limited environment where flavour develops evenly. After fermentation, the cherries are dried slowly on raised beds, with shading during peak heat to protect sweetness and preserve balance.

We chose to bring that process into the trading card artwork, showing the Triceratops carrying sealed GrainPro bags across her back, one foot lifted mid-step. The image reflects what’s happening in the coffee itself, movement within structure, energy contained rather than uncontrolled.

The result is tropical and expressive, pineapple opening into strawberry and lychee, softening into mango lassi, with vanilla aromatics and a warm golden syrup undertone, yet fully integrated. It’s bright enough to lift the mood in late winter, grounded enough to stay comforting and drinkable every day.

In the Roastersaurus system, this became the first Hearthborn of the new deck. Hearthborn coffees are defined by cohesion. They hold the field rather than dominate it. They allow complexity to exist without collapsing into noise.

That felt right here.

Kinini Anaerobic isn’t trying to impress. It’s built. Refined over seasons. Shaped by relationships, from Jackie and the early washed lots, to today’s anaerobic refinement, that have evolved alongside my own journey in coffee.

And in February, when spring still feels distant, that kind of brightness, steady and assured, is exactly what I reach for.

Kinini Anaerobic is now live.

Tropical. Disco. Vibe.

Elegance in Motion

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

Some Geshas shout. This one unfolds.
Not with volume or force, but with quiet radiance and a movement that feels as if the cup is taking a breath before it begins to open. This is the newest Mythic Microraptor of Roastersaurus, a coffee shaped not by intensity, but by grace. It is washed yet moves like a honey, silky and composed. It is floral yet steady, bright yet serene. It is a Mythic defined by stillness in motion, a rare moment of elegance that glows rather than erupts.

Arlam’s Gesha is also the first release to reveal Swoop, one of the movement types in the Roastersaurus world. Some coffees carry force, others carry precision. This one carries choice.

The Cup in Motion

From the highlands of Huehuetenango, this Gesha expresses the new moment emerging from Guatemala. Over the past two years, the region has begun producing Gesha lots that show refinement and clarity without relying on fermentation for drama. Instead of intensity, they offer sweetness through terroir, elegance through process, and depth through restraint.

Arlam’s Gesha moves in exactly this way. It does not force its character. It unfolds. Stonefruit and lychee rise first, carrying jasmine-pearl texture. Then the cup deepens into bergamot, peach, orange blossom and lemongrass over a soft milk oolong texture. The finish lingers with floral lift and honey-like glow. Everything is balanced. Everything is deliberate.

The Art

Illustrated by @kitsukaizen with original creature design by @killbeef, the Microraptor glides across the terraces of Huehuetenango. Feathers drift softly around her, light gathering along the wings as she circles in a quiet arc. This is the motion of Swoop, held in illustration before it lands in gameplay.

The drifting feathers mirror something that happens with Arlam’s roast itself. When ground, a fine gold-tinted chaff rises briefly and hangs in the air before settling. A gentle bloom, weightless and luminous. The artwork holds both moments at once: the glide of Swoop and the shimmer that lifts from the cup before flavour begins to unfold.

This release also marks the first gold foil Roastersaurus card, a Mythic in both character and form.

The Producer and the Farm

Arlam Aguirre and his partner Yoesmi are members of ASIAST, a smallholder cooperative in San Antonio Huista dedicated to ecological farming and long-term soil health. Arlam is an agronomical engineer and former Anacafé technician, bringing deep technical knowledge to cultivation and processing. His brother Klisman manages drying with equal care.

Their farm, El Aguacate, sits at 1,750 masl in Agua Dulce. Shade trees slow ripening. Terracing protects soil. Shrubs planted between rows help retain moisture in a climate that shifts quickly between dry and cool. Each detail is intentional, each decision shaped by observation.

The result is a cup that feels calm, balanced and luminous. A washed Gesha that behaves like a honey, carrying sweetness and clarity in equal measure.

Movement in the Roastersaurus World

Every Roastersaurus coffee carries a movement — the way its flavour, structure and energy behave in the cup. These movements come from the coffee itself, shaped by processing, terroir and roasting choices. While some dinosaur classes often lean toward certain instincts, the movement always belongs to the cup.

There are three movements in the Roastersaurus world:

Stomp
A grounded movement of weight and force. Cups with depth, mass and heavy sweetness often carry the Stomp instinct.

Stealth
A precise movement, clean and controlled. Washed coffees and structured naturals that strike with clarity often express Stealth.

Swoop
A movement defined by glide and intention. Fruit-forward or creamy cups with balance and softness, coffees that move between lift and depth, often reveal Swoop.

Each movement will be explored in more detail later this month as the game begins to unravel.

Swoop Revealed

Swoop is the only movement shaped by choice.
Where Stomp commits to force and Stealth commits to precision, Swoop pauses for a breath, letting the player decide how the moment will land. A cleaner strike or a deeper one, never both at once. It is a movement of intention rather than instinct.

Arlam’s Gesha carries Swoop perfectly. It can glow lightly or settle sweetly. It can lift or deepen depending on how it is brewed. It chooses its moment, unfolding rather than erupting.

How Arlam Moves When Brewed

This coffee is highly soluble and lightly roasted, which means it responds immediately to small shifts in brewing.

A gentle taper after first crack keeps the roast luminous, preserving jasmine-pearl aromatics while allowing a thin ribbon of nectarine sweetness to settle. The curve stays calm and controlled, giving the coffee the glide that defines Swoop.

Kalita Wave Filters, on Origami (4:00 drawdown)
Slow and steady, it lands with oolong-like texture and deeper peach sweetness.
A heavier, more grounded expression.

Sibarist or Meteor fast filter, on Origami (2:10 brew)
The cup lifts into peach and orange, with jasmine pearl brightness shimmering at the top.
A clean and precise expression.

Immersion
A deeper glide: nectarine, orange blossom, warm honey.
Soft, sweet, flowing.

Espresso (18g in, 45g out, 23 seconds)
Radiant and surprisingly citrus-heavy.
Bright orange, glowing sweetness, incredible for an espresso tonic.

This range of expression is exactly why Arlam moves with Swoop.
The cup can land clean or land deep, depending on intention.

Cup Character

Floral, silky, luminous.
Peach, lychee and orange with jasmine and bergamot lift, settling into a milk oolong finish with quiet radiance. Elegant, balanced and serene.

Collect and Discover

Each pack includes the first gold foil Microraptor card and the first appearance of Swoop, a movement shaped by intention. With this release, the Roastersaurus world continues to open. The layers of the game are starting to reveal themselves slowly and with purpose, much like the coffees that inspire them.

The last release introduced the cup statistics and how they describe flavour and structure. This release brings the next pieces. The card’s QR code takes you to the lore page, and this is where the newest gameplay features are revealed. Arlam’s page introduces the first example of a skill that activates before attacks, offering a quiet glimpse into how timing will shape the flow of a turn.

Over the next blogs, more of the system will continue to unfold. The three attack types will be explored in a way that links cup character to in game movement, and the brand story will deepen to show how each coffee, creature and card fit together. These features are not arriving all at once. They appear piece by piece, keeping the world fun to explore and allowing the structure behind it to settle naturally.

Arlam is not a beginning or an ending. It is the next step in the reveal.
More movements, more gameplay hints and more of the Roastersaurus world will continue to open from here.

For now, grab your bag here.

Stillness Before Flight

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

There is a moment before a new release when everything becomes very quiet.
A pause before movement.
A feeling that something is gathering, not loudly, but with intention.

Roastersaurus has been living in that stillness for the past few weeks and today that space begins to open. This is the final Mythic release of the year, arriving not with force but with calm sweetness and a gentle kind of radiance. Some coffees announce themselves. This one unfolds. It moves softly, almost weightless, carrying a silk-like texture and a quiet glow that lingers long after the cup settles.

Over the next few days I will share more about this release. The full story behind the coffee, the producer who shaped it, and the place where it grew. I will also be opening up more of the Roastersaurus world. There will be a closer look at the classes, the ideas behind them, and the different versions of special that show up in the coffees I choose. Some are bright and sharp, some are grounding and sweet, some break boundaries, and some, like this one, rest in stillness.

This week also begins to reveal something new. Each Roastersaurus card carries a movement, a way of stepping into play that mirrors how the coffee behaves in the cup. Until now these movements have stayed quietly in the background. With this final release of the year you will see the first movement come to the surface, along with the first small glimpse of how the game will eventually unfold.

More writing is coming soon. A deeper piece on the release itself, a look at how this coffee came to be, and a quiet exploration of how Roastersaurus was shaped. Later in the week, I will also share more about sourcing choices and the approach behind roasting, curation, and craft.

For now, a softer flight begins. Preorders for this Mythic are open, and the full story will follow soon.

Let’s Play

Let’s Play: The Spark of Precision

Posted on by Diana Johnston Ledezma

Roastersaurus keeps growing alongside me, one coffee at a time. With each release, I find another piece of its world taking shape — another creature, another feeling, another story the cup wants to tell. None of it is planned in advance. The coffee leads, and I follow.

After the bright rebellion of Slipwing and the rare stillness of Mythic, this release brings something more deliberate. Quickfang carries a sharper kind of grace, all movement and intention. It’s a reminder that strength doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it’s found in clarity, in rhythm, in how gently something can strike.

Basha Bekele, Quickfang Raptor

The newest addition to Roastersaurus is Basha Bekele, representing the Quickfang class, the raptors of the cup. Quickfangs are sharp, agile and deliberate, defined by movement, control and clarity.

This lot from Basha’s Gonjobe site in Bensa, Sidamo, Ethiopia, shows the precision that defines his work. It is a natural process that behaves with the control of a washed, guided by slow shade-drying and exact sorting. The altitude keeps sweetness and clarity in balance, giving the cup high, sparkling acidity and clean structure.

Mandarin cuts through with focus and elegance, followed by guava, apricot and a lingering papaya finish. Floral, tropical and refined, it carries the sparkling bite we expect from a Quickfang — energy expressed through clarity and poise.

About the Producer

Basha Bekele is part of Ethiopia’s new generation of producers, known for his patience, structure and discipline. Working with Mecota Trading, he sources only ripe red cherries from farmers around his site in the highlands of Sidamo at 2,450 masl.

In 2024 he won first place in the Ethiopia Cup of Excellence. In 2025 he was nominated for Notable Coffee Producer at the Sprudgie Awards. His precision and transparency have influenced other farmers across the region, with many adopting his methods of slow drying and consistent sorting. His work shows how one producer’s focus can lift an entire community.

The Art

Illustrated by @kitsukaizen, as inspired by original @killbeef artwork + imagery of Bekele and the farm

The artwork shows the Quickfang Raptor beneath shade nets, a woven basket of flowers and ripe cherries in its claws, a straw hat shading its eyes. The pose is calm but alert, a quiet readiness.

When placed beside the photo of Basha Bekele, the translation becomes clear. The hat, the nets and his careful posture all appear in the design. The flowers nod to the cup’s floral undertones, while the raptor’s composure mirrors Basha’s own precision and care.

It is not a fantasy portrait, but a visual translation of his process and presence, reimagined through the Roastersaurus world.

From the Lore

Basha Bekele is the first Quickfang of Roastersaurus.
Quickfangs are built on definition and intent. They move with purpose, every strike measured, every sip clear.

What Quickfang Represents

If Slipwings are disruption and Mythics are rarity, Quickfangs are refinement.
They show that precision can be just as powerful as experimentation. A Quickfang does not shout. It cuts through the noise, reminding us that mastery often speaks quietly.

Skill: Floral Feint

His card skill, Floral Feint, reflects that same idea. When Agility exceeds an opponent’s, Quickfang avoids the next strike but loses one Power the following turn. In the cup, it appears as softness before impact, a floral veil before the bright mandarin edge. A moment of elegance before precision lands.

Attack Types: How Processing Becomes Play

This release marks the first time I am decoding Attack Types, the next layer in the Roastersaurus system.

Every card carries not only a class and stats, but an attack type that connects directly to how the coffee was processed. Processing shapes sweetness, clarity and body, and in the Roastersaurus world that becomes how a coffee moves and strikes.

For Quickfangs, that attack type is Stealth.

Stealth belongs to washed coffees and bright, controlled anaerobics, cups that move with precision instead of force. They don’t hit with weight; they strike through clarity and timing.

What makes Basha Bekele unique is that it is a natural coffee that behaves with Stealth precision. Naturals usually lean toward the Stomp type, heavy and layered, but this one is different. Its balance, structure and sparkling acidity give it the agility of a washed coffee without losing natural sweetness.

In the cup, that means brightness that does not shout, acidity that cuts cleanly, and a finish that lands before you even notice it has arrived. Focused, deliberate and alive. The calm before the strike.

A full decoding of Attack Types will come soon, exploring how each process, from natural to honey to washed, shapes both flavour and play.

The Stats Decoded

The Basha Bekele Quickfang card brings together Stealth and its stat build to form the Quickfang identity. This combination of movement, structure and clarity is what allows this coffee to take on the raptor form.

Each stat mirrors a real sensory quality from the cup, turning its flavour and texture into motion.

Agility 10 (Acidity) → Sparkling mandarin lift that defines its pace and clarity.
Bite 8 (Tactile Edge) → Wine-like tropical snap that adds sharp, clean energy.
Power 6 (Body Weight) → Light to medium texture, focused and refined.
Armour 4 (Structure) → A balanced frame that holds steady without heaviness.
Stamina 7 (Aftertaste) → Lingering papaya and florals that carry the flavour forward.
Charm 7 (Sweetness) → Brown-sugar depth and soft florals that round the brightness.

Together these stats shape the Quickfang’s nature: fast, agile and precise. They define how it moves in the game and why this particular cup, with its clarity and spark, could only become a Quickfang. Soon, these stats will come into gameplay, determining how each card performs, evolves and interacts within the Roastersaurus world.

Looking ahead

My hope has always been to keep unravelling this story, to build something that connects coffee, creativity and play in a way that keeps evolving. Each release adds another piece to the world and another way to share what we create together. It’s still growing, still changing, and that’s what I love most about it.

Roastersaurus isn’t just about flavour. It’s about what happens after, how the moment of tasting becomes memory, then story, and soon, play. Each card carries that continuation, holding a fragment of the cup that lives on long after the coffee is gone.

If you want to dive deeper into how these ideas began, you can read Decode the Cup: How Roastersaurus Stats Are Born. That post explores how the world started to form through flavour, movement and intent… and how all of that is represented by the stats on the card. And keep watching this space as I continue to tell you the story behind Roastersaurus, continue to decode the cards, and of course reveal how to play the game.

For now, enjoy the spark of Quickfang and the precision that makes it strike just right.
Pre-orders for Basha Bekele (Quickfang) are now live through Roastersaurus, available in small quantities for those who move fast.

Let’s play.