Radial – Summer Blend

About the Coffee

Radial is Pilot's summer blend, built each year from a changing lineup of coffees. This year's version pairs coffees from Tanzania and Guatemala. The two origins are chosen to balance each other out: the Tanzanian coffee brings brightness and acidity, while the Guatemalan adds sweetness and body.

Pilot roasts their blends to a medium profile, which they use as a way to find the middle ground between complexity and drinkability. Radial is designed to work well over ice, which makes the sourcing decisions deliberate: both origins hold up well when chilled, where overly delicate or heavy coffees can fall flat.

The blend changes year to year based on what Pilot is sourcing at the time. That means the Tanzanian and Guatemalan coffees in this version reflect the specific relationships and harvests available for this release, not a fixed formula.

About Pilot

Andy Wilkin and Jessie Holmes opened Te Aro Roasted in May 2009 in Toronto's Leslieville neighbourhood, inside a former car garage. Andy had grown up in Te Aro, Wellington, New Zealand, and the cafe took its name and inspiration from the coffee culture he knew there. Andy came in as a freshly certified Q Grader, a professional credential that qualifies someone to score and evaluate coffee against international standards.

By 2013, the operation had grown and rebranded as Pilot Coffee Roasters, moving roasting to their current space at 50 Wagstaff Drive. Their sourcing approach centres on direct relationships with producers, which they describe as something built over time rather than a transaction. The idea is that longer-term relationships with the same farms give them more consistency and a clearer picture of how the coffee is grown.