Before I roasted for anyone else, I roasted for our own café, the Wild Mulberry. Blend 2 was the first blend I ever designed. I'll be honest: I was a total newbie. It took the best part of a year to get it right, from which origins to use to how to roast them and how much flavour to chase.

I came to coffee from the kitchen, and blending made sense to me the way cooking does. You take different ingredients, each with its own job, and combine them into a dish none of them could make alone. That's why Blend 2 has five origins. I wanted layers of flavour, not one loud note.

The five origins

  • Brazil is the base. It brings chocolate, nutty sweetness, smooth body and low acidity.
  • Sumatra adds weight. Its wet-hulled processing gives a full, syrupy texture and a little earthiness.
  • Colombia lifts it. Grown at altitude, it brings clean, bright acidity and stone fruit.
  • India rounds it out with a touch of spice and savoury depth.
  • Ethiopia gives the berries. Natural-process Ethiopian coffee, from the birthplace of arabica, brings the raspberry and blackberry notes that make Blend 2 recognisable.

Getting five origins to show up in the same cup, without any one of them shouting over the others, is a balancing act. It's the same as seasoning a dish. A little too much of one thing and the whole plate tips.

Award-winning roots

Blend 2 has won numerous awards over the years. They include a Gold medal at the CSR Golden Bean Awards (2011/12, milk-based), judged against more than a thousand entries, plus Silver and Bronze medals at the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show and the Hobart Fine Food Awards across the espresso, cappuccino and plunger categories.

We've since stepped back from competition. But the roast profile that won those medals is the one we still use today.

A coffee people come back to

These days, the best measure of Blend 2 is our customers. It holds a 4.9-star rating across 110+ reviews, and many of those customers have been ordering it for years.

"Have been buying them for years for our business, just love the taste, when you get onto a great blend you stick to it and now retired still loving it." — Shane Young

Flavour profile

It's a medium roast (flavour intensity 3/5), rich and full-bodied, with notes of fresh raspberry, blackberry, toasted almond and cocoa, and a bright, lively finish. The origins come through clearly without tipping into bitterness.

How to brew it

  • Espresso: 22g dose, 50g yield, 28–32 seconds.
  • Filter: 18g coffee to 250ml water (about 1:14), with a 2:30 brew time.
  • Cold drip: 100g coffee to 850ml filtered, iced water.
  • It's also good in a plunger, a stovetop moka pot or a reusable pod.
  • Use filtered water if your tap water is hard. Minerals and chlorine flatten good coffee fast.

With or without milk

Drink it black to taste the berries, or with milk, dairy or plant-based. It holds up especially well with oat, almond and soy. For an easy dessert, pour a shot over vanilla ice cream for an affogato.

It started as coffee for one small café. It's still roasted fresh to order, the same way, in Robe, just for a lot more people now. It's available in 250g and 1kg, whole bean or ground, with free shipping Australia-wide.

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