Burbot is our original coffee blend. It’s what our customers have come to know and love and is synonymous with the quality of the coffee we provide. Without our signature blend it just wouldn’t be Northern Cobbler Coffee.
Burbot
/ˈbəːbət/ - “the only freshwater member of the cod family”
Our burbot blend is about as unique as the fish itself. Until recently only found in a few lakes around the world such as Lake Como it is now starting to appear in the UK again. I like to think this is a good metaphor for our journey, bringing what we found and loved during our travels back to the UK.
We use 2 origins of coffee, a Brazilian Icatu Yellow Bourbon and an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.
Yirgacheffe
Renowned for its unique varieties, the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia provides some of the most interesting coffee in the world. Making up the majority of our coffee flavour profile our Heirloom Variety bean from Yirgacheffe gives our bourbon blend a truly unique taste.
Known for their explosively aromatic, citrus and floral notes the coffee from this region has been said by some to be more like a cup of Earl Grey than coffee as you’re used to. We love this origin as it gives our coffee a light and playful flavour profile, very different to the heavy and overpowering profiles you get from many of the high street chains. Through its complex aromatic flavour profile we really feel notes of lemon and bergamot cut through and are noticeable in the final blend. The sweetness that is so characteristic of this origin is unmistakable in our final blend.
The only downside of using such a clean and sharp flavoured origin is that it can sometimes be overpowered, especially in milk drinks where the milk itself provides quite a bold flavour. To counter this we introduce our second origin, a Brazilian Icatu.
Brazilian Icatu Yellow Bourbon
The bourbon coffee variety is one of the oldest varieties, a direct ancestor of the original Typica coffee plant. It’s a huge family of coffee plants, with different coloured fruit, yellow, red, green and others. We chose yellow as it’s got a bold flavour but not so much so as to overshadow the star of the show, the Yirgacheffe.
The natural mutation from typica to bourbon occurred on the island of Réunion (then known as Bourbon) and this is where it got its name from - nothing to do with the biscuit! Originally overlooked in favour of coffee varieties that are easier to grown in bulk as the coffee market matured and people were willing to pay higher prices for a more unique origin the bourbon varieties became very widely used.
We mostly use the bourbon in our blend to boost the flavours of the Yirgacheffe so that it’s not overpowered. We also use a roast profile to extract the flavours we want from the bourbon, mostly the caramel notes. This adds a richness to the aromatic Yirgacheffe and produces a truly complex blend.
The final product
After painstaking experimentation with different origins and different roasting profiles and processes we finally arrived at Burbot, the original signature coffee at Northern Cobbler.
Hopefully when you next enjoy a coffee with us, you’ll notice some of the things you may not have noticed before, whether that be the lemon notes or the caramel, or any of the many other prevailing notes.