Aviary

SUITED X AVIARY Welcoming to our shelves, humbly and sincerely, Aviary. From Aviary… “Aviary is a hyper-focused specialty coffee roaster founded on the belief that coffee should be environmentally-responsible, economically sustainable, progressive and delicious.” When we got the chance to be the world’s first wholesale partner with Aviary, we obviously couldn’t say no. This collab is something we are extremely excited about and we hope you enjoy.

AVIARY#026 from @linorodriguezospina will be one of the largest public releases of 2026 and will drop the weekend of May 8. Sign up for email notifications to be first to know. // The fifth coffee of our 2026 season is an Aviary-exclusive—a stunning honey-processed Gesha from three-time Aviary-featured and six-time Cup of Excellence awarded producer Lino Rodriguez in Colombia presenting in the cup with brilliant, vibrant notes of yuzu, blood orange, mango, passionfruit and red currant. // Last year, I sent Lino a message on Whatsapp to ask him how the harvest was going and when he thought he might have samples ready. His reply was the usual one: 'Que cafés estás buscando?' What coffees are you looking for? It's a question I've gotten used to from Lino—at this point, I've been buying coffee from him for almost ten years—since before he won the Cup of Excellence or built the reputation he has today. Back then, at the beginning of our collaboration, I was paired with Lino by @salo_puentes , then of Caravela Coffee (now of @tecocoffeehouse in Guatemala) to conduct processing experimentation in an effort to improve the cup characteristics of the Castillo on his family farm through controlled fermentation. Lino is a quality-driven producer who studied agriculture in university; he manages his family's farm and processing methodically and with an openness to new practices. It's not a surprise that his care and intentionality paved his way to way to wins and top-placements in the Cup of Excellence in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. I've cupped with Lino enough to trust his understanding of my preferences, and we have a lighthearted rapport, so I responded with a playful request: 'Para mi? Solo lo mejor, jajaja.' He responded, affirmatively, 'Listo.' // Read more through the link in bio.

Aviary x ROEST at World of Coffee San Diego  Whilst we are sad that @christopher.feran will not be joining us at World of Coffee San Diego this week, we are going to be brewing a couple of coffees from @aviary.coffee on the brew bar that were roasted on the ROEST P3000 ⚡ We’re excited to share these 2026 Season coffees:  ☕ 022 - Sergio Caro - the first release of the 2026 season from a young, award-winning producer in Caicedo, Antioquia. A multi-stage, extended fermentation washed chiroso that bursts with juicy, jammy, vibrant notes of mango, pink peppercorn, raspberry, tangerine, and pineapple.  ☕ 025 - Maria Nieves - the fourth release of the 2026 season is an Aviary-exclusive, and the third from the producer of one of Aviary’s earliest releases: Maria Nieves. A complex, mouth-filling, bright, vibrant coffee with notes of bergamot, rosehip, passionfruit, raspberry, and tangerine.  🗓️ April 10-12, 2026 📍 Booth #3323 / San Diego Convention Center 🎟 @worldofcoffeeusa

AVIARY#025 will have very limited public availability and will drop the week of April 5. Sign up for email notifications to be first to know. // The fourth coffee of our 2026 season is an Aviary-exclusive and our third from Maria Nieves. After shipping disruptions impacted the cup quality of last year's release, our determination to purchase from many of the same producers year-over-year rewards us in 2026 as Maria returns to full strength with a bright, tropical, complex cup. // Of all of Aviary's releases in our inaugural season, the one I've longed to taste again came from Maria Nieves and the first year of production of her Gesha trees. That harvest resulted in a coffee that was not only the highest-scoring coffee of all coffees I bought in 2023-2024, but also one of my favorite coffees of Aviary's first season. When it was time to contract coffee for our 2026 season, I again reached out to our partners at @yellowroostercoffee to talk about buying from Maria. With the market at all-time highs and competition in Peru compounding premiums on exotic varieties like Gesha, Yellow Rooster was cautious about their contracting, particularly after facing shipping issues last year. Risk means different things depending on your vantage in the supply chain, but for an importer, risk of product failure—of paying a premium for a coffee that might need to be sold at a loss—is an unacceptable outcome in a market plagued by illiquidity and expensive financing. But as a roaster, when we buy coffee year-over-year, we help to mitigate risk for producers and create stability. Buying year-over-year enables us to taste the progression of time over every season and the impacts of every variable on the cup. Even producers who are in the highest elevations growing the highest-quality cultivars may experience disruptions—through labor shortages, climate change, war, political disruption, market volatility or storms that delay shipping—that result in years of worse quality. And so, we committed to purchase again. by choosing to buy anyway, we have the privilege of being there when the quality is once again—as it is this year—meteoric.

Scenes from the first-ever Cleveland Brewer's Cup seen through the lens 📸 of @racheljapple . // Specialty coffee in Cleveland turns fifty this year, dating back to the founding of Arabica Coffee in 1976. What it lacks in population, Cleveland makes up for in enthusiasm for specialty coffee: today, the city of Cleveland is home to nearly two dozen specialty roasters as well as 60+ shops within city limits—roughly 22 shops per 100,000 residents, or more per capita than San Francisco or Denver. But in spite of this legacy, the coffee scene in Cleveland still feels both young and full of potential, yet insular and somewhat disconnected from the industry writ large. And so, I've dedicated a large part of my career to growing the ambition of our local scene. A year ago, Cal from @duckrabbitcoffee brought me his idea for a Brewer's Cup. We wanted to find a way to bring baristas from across the city together to focus on the craft of extraction. This past weekend, we brought that vision to life and launched the Cleveland Brewer’s Cup, a collaboration between duck-rabbit and @aviary.coffee . Twenty competitors—professionals and enthusiasts from Cleveland, across Ohio and across the country—joined us at duck rabbit’s roastery in Cleveland to demonstrate their brewing prowess. With two guest judges— professionals with deep pedigrees in specialty coffee (Phil from @algrano and @schmecky.schmeeves )—we chose our favorite cups.
 I'm thrilled both that the winner was an enthusiast, and that the runner-up was a barista in Cleveland—hailing from the company that I once led and where, years before, I got my start in coffee.
 In 2027, we look forward to expanding the competition to include more opportunities for coffee pros and enthusiasts alike to learn, cup and exchange ideas. Thank you to our incredible sponsors, without whom we wouldn't have been able to make this event a success. Through your generosity, we were able to make sure that everyone who poured got to bring something home: @algrano @fellowproducts @oxo @baristagazine @sibaristcoffee @baristahustle @raisethebar_coffee @mahlkonig @sweetmarias @minorfigures @slowpoursupply @showroom.coffee @coffeewaterpro

New on the blog (link in bio) Batch to the future: the @roestcoffee P3000 // Early in the planning stages for @aviary.coffee , I decided that I wanted to roast using an electric coffee roaster. It’s a somewhat unconventional proposition: though there’s no discernible cup difference between coffees roasted using gas versus electric, burning fossil fuels is an efficient way to produce heat, and most of the roasters on the market at the time were—and still are—built to use them. And, in the state of Ohio, fossil fuels are inexpensive. Natural gas, the primary fuel used in the U.S., flows in capillaries buried deep beneath the state’s shale bedrock. But hydraulic fracturing is destructive to local ecosystems, contaminates groundwater, causes earthquakes, and is part of a wholesale political effort to sell off public lands for oil extraction. Plus: the burning of fossil fuels is a direct cause of climate change—and has been shown to increase respiratory ailments such as asthma, leading to states like New York banning the use of gas as a heating fuel in new residential construction. The fossil fuel industry is, suffice to say, problematic. So Loring—which I’d roasted on for most of my career and love to use—was out. Ohio’s deregulated energy economy, though, meant that I could select my own energy generation supplier and cheaply purchase electricity generated only using clean energy sources like wind and solar, making the prospect of my idealism more economically viable. At the time, there were scant options available for commercial-scale electric coffee roasters, let alone with the feature set that I desired in a production roaster. I opted for a Stronghold S9X, a Korean-made air roaster with an unusual design and footprint, notable quality of life features, and multiple means of controlling and manipulating heat transfer. From March 2024 until December 2025, I used that roaster as Aviary’s sole production machine. But now, entering Aviary’s third year and forecasting 50% year-over-year growth in roasting volume, I’ve sold it, replacing it with a much smaller machine: the Roest P3000. // Full post at the link in bio

AVIARY#023: Shibru Dube drops this week. // The second coffee of our 2026 season is an Aviary-exclusive lot from a single producer in Gedeb, Yirgacheffe—his first-ever attempt at a wet-process coffee presenting in a floral, fruity cup with notes of jasmine, rose, cherry, lime zest, Valencia orange and peach. // I visited Shibru Dube for the first time in December 2023 as part of my sourcing work for Crop to Cup Coffee Importers. Much of my work was focused on opening markets for smallholder-exporters such as Shibru, who had obtained his export license in 2018 but had never successfully sold his coffee directly to a roaster or importer. While many—if not most—of the most renowned coffees to come out of Ethiopias in recent years were grown in the newer-planted highlands around Bensa, I have long loved the cup profiles of coffees coming out of Yirgacheffe and saw high quality potential as we walked Shibru's small farm in the kebele of Chelchele. By exporting directly rather than selling their coffee as cherry, producers stand to gain greater value for their harvest and increase their financial security. In the past, Shibru had sold his cherry to local suppliers, receiving market pricing. His first attempt to export directly was derailed by a motorcycle accident en route to Dilla that broke both of his legs and led to @kefiyalewshibru stepping in to help his father. It was through Kefyalew—who works as a teacher in Addis—that we met Shibru. The elevation of Shibru's farm, 2100 meters, is high for the area; the hike through his tall Kurume and Dega plantings overshadowed by hundred-year-old hardwood trees left me short of breath. Unlike other prize-winning parts of the South like Bensa, his farm was densely forested with a thick layer of topsoil. As we walked, Kefyalew noted that the Gedeo people regard the forest with a spiritual reverence; to his family, agriculture was a way to honor that gift and the ancient trees must be preserved to ensure their family's continued prosperity. // Learn more on the Aviary website and sign up for email notifications ✨

We open our 2026 season with an Aviary exclusive from a young, award-winning producer in Caicedo, Antioquia—a multi-stage, extended fermentation washed Chiroso. Public sale of AVIARY#022 is coming this weekend: sign up for notifications and read more about it on the Aviary website. // Hiding in plain sight and a not-quite-four hour drive from Medellín grows some of the best coffee in the world near a town called Urrao. Over a decade ago, Carmen Montoya's win at Cup of Excellence appeared poised to catapult the cultivar she grew—Chiroso—to the stature of Gesha, or later, Pink Bourbon. Later discovered to be an Ethiopian landrace (like both Gesha and Pink Bourbon), Chiroso never found much adoption outside of Urrao—perhaps owing to confusion surrounding its name, which seems to refer to two different trees attached to a traditional variety as a prefix ("Caturra Chiroso" or "Bourbon Chiroso") or perhaps because of the seemingly unpredictable nature of its cups. The best Chirosos, though, rivaled the best Ethiopians I've ever had, and all had come from Urrao, from producers like Carme—until now. // Learn more on the Aviary website via the link in bio.

Through the year, we vacuum-sealed and deep-froze any remainder of coffee that we didn't use for profiling, or that we didn't need for subscribers, or that we wanted for later. As a result, we had between 3-6 kg of every release this year—plus a couple from 2024. But with 2026 on the horizon and coffees for next season arriving, it's time to make room: our 2025 freezer sale opens to the public on Saturday at 10 AM. 2026 season subscribers get 24 hours of early access beginning tomorrow morning—watch your email inbox for your password. All of these coffees were roasted on our new @roestcoffee P3000, a tangential roaster that allows greater consistency and control. We're using this freezer sale as an opportunity to explore the machine's limits and heat application with different types of coffee ahead of our 2026 season. Revisit your favorites from this year, presented in a new way.

The eleventh coffee of our 2025 season is a subscriber exclusive and comes through a collaboration between Aviary, Mokha King and Yusuf Al Aamal that almost never happened—a honey process Yemenia designed to push the bounds of risk and possibility and examine the nuance and geopolitical realities behind the international coffee trade. // The story behind this one is worth a read —link in bio.

After <6 days, reservations for Aviary's 2026 season have sold out: reservations are now closed. The idea for Aviary has existed in some form in my head, in my Notes app, and scrawled across notebooks dating back to 2015. It's been a thrill to have the opportunity to bring it to life in support and service of the other work I do. I am floored by the enthusiasm of so many people for that work—thank you for supporting and believing in this project. We're looking forward to another great year of coffee. If you missed the opportunity to subscribe, fear not: there will be several public drops throughout the year. Be sure to sign up for email notifications to stay in the loop.

Reservations for @aviary.coffee 2026 season are now open through the link in bio. Reservations are limited and close when sold out or on Dec 31—whichever comes first. Aviary exists to showcase the work that I talk about here on Instagram and on my blog in a way that can be held, tasted and shared. My blog and other channels—which are not and have never been paywalled or monetized—are entirely subsidized by Aviary. If you’ve enjoyed or benefitted from the information and content I share here, on my blog, through @buyingseason , or on Youtube, please consider subscribing to Aviary’s 2026 season to support this work. // This year, Aviary operated with a new model where we sold reservations for a full season of coffee, collecting pre-payment upfront. This gave us the predictability we needed to purchase coffee on a forward basis and helped to finance work at origin as well as pre-payment of coffees ahead of harvest. It was an experiment designed to better understand the nature of the business of coffee production—where cashflow isn't tied to ongoing sales through the year but rather one harvest event, requiring planning, budgeting and cash management. For 2026, we're once again offering full-season reservations. In addition to securing each official release (free of the chaos and FOMO of limited drops), Aviary members have the first opportunity to purchase additional bags of coffee (when available) at a discount versus the retail price—as well as the first chance to order experimental and limited-release drops which are too small to make available to the group as a whole. Aviary aims to release one coffee per calendar month in 2026—and will continue to showcase work that we find to be notable and interesting, with an emphasis on clean, bright coffees from smallholders and otherwise lesser-known producers. New for 2026 will be our roasting machine—we're migrating to the new, state-of-the-art @roestcoffee P3000 to give us greater control over and consistency in the roasting process. For those who subscribe: thank you.