What is the Excelsa Cafe Experience?

When you step into our café, expect the unrefined. And the unenlightened.

Expect to be walking into a palapa hut right in the heart of the jungles of Central America. Our own little coffee laboratory with graduated cylinders, and various roasting hardware we are always treasure hunting for. Expect to be the first of your friends to discover the hidden gem of coffee. Expect to be entertained and education and maybe even delighted by the special flavor and attributes of Excelsa. Where everyday we passionately obsess over what it takes to make the best cup of Excelsa and how we are going to share it with the world.

Like our cafe, the Excelsa Coffee bean industry is in its early fledgling state.

There is no standard harvesting process, no standard processing procedure, and no objective cupping grade to standardize this industry. It is not a commodity traded coffee like Arabica and Robusta that can be found in every cafe, gas station and fast food joint across the USA. Although certain farms around the world are more advanced in their excelsa cultivation (like Vietnam and Philippines), many other farms are just beginning to experiment with this coffee bean on a large scale (like South Sudan), even in places where coffee has never been grown before (like Yemen and Floriday). In the next decade many more farms will turn to growing this bean. Especially with the acceleration of a drying and changing climate, many farmers are looking for a hardier crop of coffee to protect their livelihood and the Excelsa Coffee tree seems to be the solution. Our own very work at ExcelsaCoffee.org is to be at the forefront of sharing our own Research and Development with farmers worldwide to how to grow Excelsa.

Currently we source directly from farms all around the globe. Some farms we watch via whatsApp as the farmers climb the trees to hand pick them, and show us hand sorted excelsa, approved and paid for over the phone and shipped directly to our warehouse and roaster. Ironically its some of the most expensive coffee ever bought on earth yet still contains twigs, rocks and sticks as we receive it. Where we de-stone it with our own machines, or hand sort it again ourselves. Always tracking what makes each batch a better quality and refinement.

At our cafe, everyday we are experimenting with different roast levels, different extracts, different regional beans, different temperatures, and different ratios. Whether it is a pour-over, aeropress, ground control, we are carefully taking notes as to what makes the best cup. Always eager for the feedback of those willing to join our journey. And those willing to improve their lives with a more mindful, half-caffeinated morning routine.

When you step inside our cafe expect it to be as unfinished as our quest for the perfect cup.

Don’t expect an assembly line cafe designed by big business to maximize shareholder value. Don’t expect sugars and syrups with seasonal marketing attributes to mask the cheap commodity beans underneath. Or polished tall ceilings and canned lighting backed by large private equity that each cup sold has to pay for. And all those things are fine and have their place, but become a distraction in our mission to define what makes the best Excelsa.

Each week you come visit will be different than the last one as we do the hard work to define the perfect cup of what makes Excelsa the champagne of coffee. Each week we may add a few more simple styles, or choices, or accommodations to make our guests feel welcome, but its no guarantee if it distracts us from our vision: to define from farm-to-cup what makes the perfect Excelsa Coffee cup.

With more time, more obsession, and more understanding we believe our cafe will continue to evolve and refine itself into what it needs to be for the world.

In the meantime, come visit a cafe and a journey that is proud to call itself unfinished. We are just getting started and have so much adventure to come.