Doppelganger Espresso

About the Coffee

This blend draws from a group of small producers in the El Cielito and El Cedral regions of Honduras, sitting between 1,500 and 1,800 meters. The farms are owned by families including Wilmer, Eduard, and Donaldo Dubon, Antonio Martinez, Pedro Moreno, Margarito, Kevin, Roselis, and Evin Herrera. Phil & Sebastian also contribute coffee from their own small farm in Honduras. The varieties across these lots are Pacas, Bourbon, and Yellow Catuaí, all processed using traditional washed fermentation tanks.

Because each individual lot is often under 200 pounds of green coffee, Phil & Sebastian taste through many small samples and identify which lots share similar growing elevations, varietals, and bean densities. Coffees that are grown in the same area with similar densities roast more evenly together, which means the final blend holds together at a single roast level without some beans going flat or bitter while others are undercooked. The result is a larger, more consistent lot than any single producer could offer on their own. Phil first visited El Cielito in 2011, and it remains a region he returns to regularly. Several farms there have placed in the top 10 of the Cup of Excellence multiple times.

Doppelganger is roasted darker than most specialty espressos, though the beans are a chocolate brown rather than the oily black you might expect from a dark roast. The goal was a coffee that pulls consistently across different machines, from manual espresso setups to fully automatic ones, and holds up equally well straight or in milk drinks.

About Phil & Sebastian

Phil Robertson and Sebastian Sztabzyb co-founded Phil & Sebastian in Calgary in 2007. Phil came from an engineering background and built a custom roasting machine and wrote the software that runs the company's roasting and order operations. Sebastian focuses on buying green coffee in Central and South America and running the business side. Both travel to origin regularly to source directly from producers.

They pay above the industry average for green coffee and put money into on-the-ground projects at origin. The Honduras relationship is a good example: they buy from a network of small family farms in El Cielito and El Cedral and have gone far enough with the relationship to operate their own small farm there as well.

"Phil & Sebastian is a favourite of mine from my time in Calgary. My wife swore by their "Hartmann Honey" beans, and we stocked it (or, maybe "hoarded" is a better word) for as long as they sold it. It feels like a 'full circle' moment to finally have them in our rotation."

- Dean, Director of Coffee