These are my regular house espresso coffees, roasted throughout the year for making great espresso at home or in the café.

All the coffees I roast at Freda are seasonal, single origin coffees. So while you’ll always find Black Dog and Black Rain here, the farm, origin and coffee behind them will change throughout the year as different harvests come into season. Rather than blending coffees together to create consistency, I look for new single origin coffees that fit the flavour profile I want for each one.

Black Dog and Black Rain are always made from the same coffee, but I roast them differently.

Black Rain is the darker and more traditional of the two. It’s my comforting, familiar speciality espresso, designed to be forgiving and easy to dial in on a home espresso machine. If you like rich, sweet espresso or coffee with milk, I’d probably start here.

Black Dog is roasted lighter, giving the same coffee a little more vibrancy, acidity and character. You may have to work slightly harder to get the best from it as espresso, but that’s part of the fun.

Making espresso at home can quickly become a hobby in itself. If you need help choosing coffee beans for your espresso machine, dialing in your grinder or improving your extraction, have a look through my espresso brew guides and Notes from Freda blog, or just get in touch. I’m always happy to talk coffee.