Curiosities: Behind The Curtain

SIP THE WEIRD. WONKY. WONDEROUS

CRAFT HOUSE are excited to launch our new CURIOSITIES coffee. We’ve had a bit of fun with this one…

CURIOSITIES is an alternate coffee reality. Glitched flavours, ‘lava’ grades, Irreal-infusions, oxygen-deprived ferments; coffee oddities laced with surreal stories and Producer obsessions. These beans are not here to make sense, that’s the point.

We wanted to bring you something a bit different, and CURIOSITIES seeks to platform exceptional coffees that challenge norms and taste perceptions, going beyond ‘limited edition’, telling tales, showcasing recipes and wrapping it up in something that blends together hazy cultural references and loads of other phantastic ideas. It’s all a bit absurd.

We drop a CURIOSITY, quietly, every few months, subscribers get flash, 24hr early access to a scarce run, and then everyone else is free to jump in and secure their lot. Keep an eye out, don’t blink or you could miss out.

Delve deeper….

As part of the launch of Curiosities we wanted to give people an insight to the thinking behind it and why we took the decisions we did. Take a trip round the wonderland of curiosities with our Head of Coffee, Hannah Whitton and Roastery Manager, Luke Evans.

What is the idea behind Curiosities?

The question we asked ourselves was, "what makes us curious?" ‘Curiosities’ is about searching for coffee producers doing things a little differently; in how they process their coffee, the practices on the farm, or how they're supporting their local community. It's about finding coffees that genuinely make us curious. It's not about the most expensive coffees or the highest scores; it's about finding the producers breaking the mould, doing things their own way, or who just haven't had the chance to shine yet. The coffee we choose might not always make sense, but that’s kind of the point. 

If Curiosities is an 'alternate coffee reality,' what exactly was wrong with the current one?"

Nothing was wrong and that's the honest answer. This isn't about what's wrong, it's about what's missing. Why aren't certain producers or coffees getting a spotlight? What are we missing out on? So much of specialty coffee is focused on SCA scores or price; we want to find the coffees people might otherwise overlook and put them front and centre. I guess the alternate reality is, what happens when you remove the scores? It certainly changed the way we look at sourcing. 

What happens to a roastery’s philosophy when you stop trying to make unusual coffees 'make sense'?

The philosophy behind the way we roast has always been the same: "what's best for this coffee? How do we refine it?" We love taking a coffee, understanding where it's come from, how it's been processed, and where we need to take it in the roast. The biggest challenge here is always that we have so little of the green coffee, it's a one-and-done roast. No prep, no sample roasts, just pure instinct.

How do you find Producers who are just as beautifully unhinged as you are?

We work with a whole network of green coffee suppliers, from social enterprises to single-origin-only focused suppliers. Because we demand high standards from our suppliers, we tend to hear about interesting coffees early. We also have direct relationships that connect us to related farms and producers. Take Jairo Arcila in Quindío, Colombia he’s a third-generation producer who's built his own legacy of farms and is now pushing into experimental fermentation. Those are the kind of connections that get quirky, excellent coffees into our cups.

Can these outlier coffees tell stories, how?

For us, this is the heart of Curiosities. Every coffee and every producer has a story to tell and it's our job to help them tell it. That story might be about the producer themselves, the coffee's journey from origin, the thinking behind how we've chosen to roast it, or even something about us and why we were curious about it in the first place. People are buying a front-row seat to that kind of self-expression. They want to feel connected to the dedication behind the cup. Without that passion, there wouldn't be anything to be curious about in the first place.

Why did we choose occasional drops over permanent fixtures?

Because some of these coffees only exist seasonally for a moment, we have to be purposefully selective and timely. The lot is tiny, the process, is at times unrepeatable, and once it's gone, that's it; there's no reordering, no "we'll get more in next month." Treating that as a permanent fixture would be dishonest to what it actually is.

There's also something valuable in the wait itself. Anticipation is part of the experience. It's the same reason people queue for a restaurant that doesn't take bookings, or set an alarm for a sneaker drop. When something's genuinely scarce and you know it, it changes how you pay attention to it. We wanted Curiosities to have that same energy.

And it's a chance to say thank you to subscribers who show up for us every week. To get the first look, 24 hours before anyone else. Loyalty should come with a reward, not just a discount code.