Frequently Asked Questions

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 Short answer: a play on words (Colombia + Bee) 

Long answer:

Laura is from Colombia and the country is well known for producing some of the best Arabica coffee in the world. The ‘bee’ is based on two factors that make our coffee taste great: 

1. Coffee plants used for Colombee (and most if not all coffee plants in Colombia) are Arabica plants which are self-pollinating plants. Despite being so, the more bee’s assist pollination, the better quality the coffee fruit and ultimately the higher quality the coffee bean.
2. All coffee beans are sourced 1 of 3 ways on the farm: Washed, Natural, or Honey. Our coffee is honey processed. Honey processed coffee is often considered "the best" by many coffee lovers because it combines the sweetness and complexity of a natural process with the clarity and bright acidity of a washed process. 

 A family-run farm in Colombia’s coffee region. We bumped into a nice Colombian-Argentinian couple  while at a coffee tasting in NYC. They had just produced their first coffee harvest after purchasing a coffee farm in Colombia (it takes a couple years for coffee plants to harvest) and we became their first partners! They plan to establish a boutique hotel on the farm and we will follow up with more details as their plan comes to life. 

Yes, it is ‘Specialty Coffee’. “Specialty coffee” is any coffee tested by the Specialty Coffee Association with a score of 80 or higher. Anything less than 80 is not ‘specialty’.

Coffee is like wine in the sense there are many varieties. There are 129 different species of coffee plants, with thousands of varieties existing among them. That being said, most coffee comes from a couple dozen varieties within 2 species of coffee plants in particular.

Colombee sources directly from a small farm that produces the Cenicafe 1 variety. Cenicafe was created by the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation as a hybrid from two different varieties in order to create a coffee plant resistant to common diseases and temperature changes, therefore making coffee growing more sustainable. You’re drinking a variety of coffee bean that most of the coffee drinking world has never had! Cenicafe 1 produces a flavor profile of cocoa (chocolate), honey, and hazelnut tasting notes. For more info, read here. 

We ship orders within 24 hours of roasting. Orders placed by or before Friday will be roasted and shipped by the following Monday.

After thorough analysis, we have identified the most affordable shipping option which will typically deliver your beans to your home no later than 5 business days from shipping.

We don’t want to sound pretentious, so our answer is: However you like (with milk, sugar, etc.). That being said, we mean it when we say the coffee is special on its own. As mentioned above, the coffee naturally has notes of cocoa, honey, and hazelnut. Unless drinking the coffee black, you will not notice the particulars of Colombee coffee.

This is how we drink our coffee:

1. We tend to brew coffee using an automatic drip coffee maker. Therefore we grind Colombee coffee beans medium.
2. We think our coffee tastes great in a 15:1 ratio (that is, 15 grams of water to every 1 gram of coffee beans). Our coffee pot holds 25oz of water, so we grind about 1.6oz of beans.
3. Finally, we drink our coffee black, as we don’t want additives to overpower the natural taste the high quality coffee beans bring to the table. (Which is also why we don’t make dark roast 🙂)