Smooth Operator

About the Coffee

The farms behind Smooth Operator sit in the El Cielito and El Cedral regions of Honduras, at elevations between 1,500 and 1,800 meters. The coffee comes from a group of smallholder producers including Margarito, Kevin, Roselis, and Evin Herrera, Wilmer, Eduard, and Donaldo Dubon, Antonio Martinez, and Pedro Moreno. Phil & Sebastian also contribute a small amount from their own farm in Honduras. Each producer works tiny individual lots, often less than 200 pounds of green coffee at a time.

Because these individual lots are so small, Phil & Sebastian cup them separately and then group complementary ones together into a larger blend. The coffees are all Pacas, Bourbon, and Yellow Catuaí varieties, grown close enough together in elevation and terroir that their bean densities are similar. That consistency matters for roasting: beans with similar density roast evenly together, so nothing gets over-roasted or underdeveloped. All the coffee is fully washed using traditional fermentation tanks, a process that removes the fruit from the bean before drying, typically producing a clean, well-defined cup.

El Cielito is where Phil first visited Honduras in 2011, and the region has a strong competition history, with multiple farms placing in the top 10 of the Cup of Excellence. The blend changes as new lots come in throughout the harvest, but the approach stays the same: find the most chocolatey and balanced combination from this group of producers.

About Phil & Sebastian

Phil Robertson and Sebastian Sztabzyb co-founded Phil & Sebastian in 2007 in Calgary. Phil came in with an engineering background and built their roasting machine himself, writing the software that runs it. Sebastian focuses on sourcing from Central and South America, which is how the long-running relationship with the El Cielito and El Cedral producers developed.

On the buying side, Phil & Sebastian pay above the industry average for green coffee and invest in on-the-ground projects at origin. The Honduras relationship is a good example: they source from individual smallholder lots year after year, and even grow a small amount of their own coffee there.

"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