The 3 Best New Coffee Roasts to Try This Month

Seasonality is everything in coffee. So when it comes to choosing the best beans to brew at home, our recommendation is simple: just look to what’s new. Here, three fresh batches from some of the country’s best roasters — Merit, Huckleberry and Blueprint.

Merit Nano Genji

One of the first harvests from a brand new coffee washing station in the heart of Ethiopian coffee country, Merit’s latest is a lightly sweet, bright and floral tribute to coffee’s most-loved origin. Best brewed pour-over.

Origin: Jimma Zone, Ethiopia
Roast Level: Light-Medium

Huckleberry Burundi Gitwe

In her first year on the competitive coffee roasting circuit, Huckleberry’s head roaster Shelby Williamson took America’s top prize: the U.S. Roasting Championship. This new bag, a Trade exclusive, grows for years on Gitwe, a mountain in Africa’s Eastern Rift range before harvest. The roaster’s tasting notes include peach, graham cracker and tangerine.

Origin: Muramvya Province, Burundi
Roast Level: Light-Medium

Blueprint Gamatui Community

The best way to understand the enormous effect processing has on beans is to try a coffee that’s undergone natural processing. Grown on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda, Blueprint’s just-harvested medium roast is the perfect place to start. The beans boast huge sugar and acid content, making for a fruit bomb of a bag (Trade describes it as “deeply reminiscent of your favorite berry-flavored cereal”). The beans are harvested from three coffee plant varietals, including SL34, one of the best plants for coffee quality in the world.

Origin: Kapchorwa, Uganda
Roast Level: Medium