Swallow roasts its own coffee, and the way we do it shapes everything you taste. We choose the green coffee ourselves, roast each one to its own profile, and taste every batch before it reaches your cup. This is how a coffee makes its way from a single farm to a numbered drop on our shelf.
Why we roast our own coffee
We wanted the whole journey in our own hands. We choose the green coffee, we decide how it should be roasted, and we stand behind what lands in your cup. The roastery sits in its own space away from the café, so the coffee is roasted off site and brought to the bar. From roastery to cup, every decision is ours.
That matters to us for three reasons.
We roast each coffee on its own terms. Every lot is different, and a single house profile smooths over the things that make each one special. So we build the roast around the coffee in front of us, not the other way round.
We let the coffee rest before we serve it. Fresh off the roaster, coffee is still releasing carbon dioxide, and if you brew it too soon it tastes sharp and a little unsettled. We give it the time it needs, so it reaches you tasting the way it should.
We taste everything before it goes out. The team cups the roasted coffee, tweaks the profile, and waits until the cup is right. If it is not there yet, it stays with us a little longer.
What specialty grade actually means
Specialty coffee is not just a label. Specialty grade means the coffee has scored 80 points or above on a 100-point scale, judged by certified Q Graders.
It also means the coffee can be traced all the way back to the farm, with the country, region, producer, altitude and processing method all known and written down.
If you would like the full picture, we go deeper in What is Specialty Coffee.
How we choose our coffee
It starts on the cupping table. Cupping is the way we taste and compare green coffee samples, and we do it before we buy anything.
Where a coffee comes from is the first thing we look at. We buy only coffee we can trace to a named farm, with the producer, the region, the altitude and the processing method all known to us. How it is grown matters just as much, so we pay close attention to how the cherries are picked, how the coffee is processed, and how it is dried.
Then there is the cup itself. It has to be clear and full of character rather than pleasant and easy to forget. We would rather have character than volume. That is why our releases are small and specific instead of large and samey. We are after a coffee with a story to tell, not a blend that stays the same forever.
What a Flight is
Some of our coffees go out as limited numbered drops we call Flights. Each Flight is a single coffee, released in a small run, and numbered in order. Once a Flight sells out, that is it.
Flights exist because the most special coffees come in tiny amounts. A farm might produce only a handful of bags of something remarkable in a single harvest. A Flight is our way of sharing that coffee honestly, without pretending there is more of it than there is.
Flight 001: a worked example
Flight 001 is the first in the series. It is a rare Ombligón variety grown at Finca Motta in Acevedo, Huila, Colombia. Ombligón is an unusual variety, loved for how it tastes and how little of it there is.
The producer is Jefferson Adrián Motta. He grows the coffee at 1,700 metres above sea level on 4.6 hectares of land. That height slows the cherries as they ripen and gathers more sweetness in the bean.
The lot is made using the yellow honey process, where some of the fruit is left on the bean as it dries, building sweetness and body. The cherries were handpicked when ripe and dried on raised beds.
It tastes of coconut, clean and sweet. This is a small batch of a single coffee, from one grower and one harvest. You can see the current release on the Flight 001 product page.
Come and drink it
You will find Swallow Specialty Coffee, Plaza del Carmen 13, Alicante, open every day from 08:30 to 16:30.
Whatever is in your cup is a coffee we chose, roasted and tasted ourselves. You can find everything we have right now on the full collection page, and the story of how the café began on the Swallow story page.