What Happened with Gitesi Anaerobic

You’ve probably been wondering why our Gitesi Anaerobic suddenly disappeared shortly after its release announcement on May 16th.

Unfortunately, the reason is simple: We roasted the wrong green coffee.

During our second quality control and after speaking with Aimé from Gitesi Coffee, we identified the mistake and immediately removed the coffee from our lineup.

What happened?

Due to an administrative error by our logistics provider, several green coffee sacks were mislabeled.

We organize the logistics and import of Aimé’s coffees through shared containers provided by Algrano. These containers make it possible for small roasteries like us to buy directly from producers, since shipping and import costs are shared among multiple roasters.

Roasteries with direct relationships to producers can book space in these containers, and Algrano then organizes the combined shipment to Europe.

For the last harvest, we also carried out a co-import with a friendly roastery for the first time. We connected the roastery with Aimé, and they purchased a small quantity of Gitesi Natural, which was shipped together with our coffees in the same shared container.

This is where the mistake happened:

The sacks belonging to our anaerobic microlot were mixed up with the sacks from the co-import. As a result, the labels and lot numbers no longer matched. Instead of receiving the anaerobic microlot, we unknowingly received additional sacks of Gitesi Natural that had been assigned the wrong lot numbers.

How we discovered the mistake

At first, we did not notice the issue during our initial test roasts.

We had roasted the anaerobic microlot significantly lighter and approached it differently in order to develop a dedicated roast profile, and we cupped it separately. Certain similarities to the Natural coffee seemed plausible to us because both coffees are the same variety — Red Bourbon — and also share similar processing characteristics. Both coffees, for example, were sun-dried for 30 days.

We then roasted the first production batch, packed it, and carried out another quality control. However, this tasting was again done in isolation.

The coffee tasted intensely fruity and overall very good.

And this was our biggest mistake: After this cupping, we released the coffee for sale.

The following week, during our regular quality control where we cup all roasted coffees side by side, we noticed that Gitesi Natural and Gitesi Anaerobic tasted extremely similar.

We then spoke with Aimé to learn more about the lot and get his perspective. He sent us photos of the coffee sacks from export.

That’s when we quickly recognized the mix-up. Algrano later confirmed the mistake as well.

What we are doing now

Unfortunately, by this point part of the first roast batch had already been sold.

To everyone who purchased Gitesi Anaerobic, we are of course offering either a refund or a free replacement coffee of their choice.

We are also implementing several changes as a result of this mistake:

In the future, all test roasts will be cupped directly against other coffees from the same producer in order to detect potential mix-ups earlier.
New coffees will only be released after all quality control steps have been fully completed, even if this means delaying the release by a few days.
For future co-imports, we will request photos of all correctly labeled coffee sacks directly from producers before shipment.

Being transparent about our mistakes is extremely important to us, which is why we wanted to openly explain what happened.

We would also like to sincerely thank Aimé for his quick support and direct communication. Without this close exchange, we likely would have discovered the mistake much later.

And of course, we want to apologize to all of you.

Unfortunately, this also means that Gitesi Anaerobic will not be available again this year.

However, for the upcoming harvest we have already purchased another anaerobic lot from Aimé, and we look forward to sharing it with you properly next year.