Tandem Coffee

Tandem Coffee has roasted in Portland, Maine, since 2012, when Will and Kathleen Pratt settled there after coffee jobs in Boston and New York. Twelve coffees are active. Eight are single origins and four are blends, which puts two thirds of the shelf on the single-origin side and asks a customer to pick a country rather than a recipe.

The buying leans toward East Africa. Ethiopia supplies three of the eight single origins and Kenya two, five of eight from one corner of the continent, with Colombia at two and Peru at one filling out the rest. For a 12-coffee list, that is a deep origin bench, and it means the shelf turns over with the harvests instead of holding steady through the year. One coffee in the active catalog is decaf. Blends account for 33 percent of what is on offer, four slots out of twelve.

Single Origins

Blends

Roast Profile & Flavor Range

Six of the 12 active coffees are roasted medium-light, the largest group on the histogram. Four are medium and two are medium-dark. Nothing is roasted light and nothing is roasted dark, so the catalog lives in the middle three rungs of the scale, though it lives in the upper half of that middle rather than the lower one.

Acidity averages medium-high while body averages plain medium, and that pairing is the clearest signal in the numbers. It describes a cup with more lift than weight, which fits the sourcing. Six of the eight single origins are washed, with one natural and one anaerobic or fermented lot as the only departures. Twelve-ounce bags run from $19 to $28 with the median at $23, and across all sizes the list spans $18 to $29.

What Tandem Coffee Coffees Tend to Taste Like

No single note dominates this catalog. Rose is the only one that appears twice. Everything else among the top tokens shows up exactly once, which suggests the tasting notes get written lot by lot rather than pulled from a house vocabulary that fits everything.

What the notes share is a leaning toward tea and spice. Black tea and clove tea both appear, along with baking spices and candied ginger, a warm aromatic register that suits medium-high acidity. Red fruit is the other thread, cranberry, cherry and blood orange between them, tart rather than jammy. Sweetness stays restrained, burnt honey and butterscotch once each. Cacao and chocolate account for the only cocoa notes on the whole list, one apiece.

Why Buy Tandem Coffee

• Eight single origins of twelve: Two thirds of the active catalog is single origin. Blends take the other four slots.

• East Africa leads the list: Ethiopia supplies three lots and Kenya two, five of the eight single origins from one region.

• Acidity above body: Acidity averages medium-high while body averages medium, the profile of a cup built for a pour-over.

• Tea and tart fruit: Black tea, clove tea and candied ginger sit beside cranberry and blood orange in the notes. It reads more like a winter spice drawer than a chocolate bar.

Is Tandem Coffee Right for You?

Order here if you brew by hand and like acidity. Six of the 12 coffees are medium-light, acidity averages medium-high against a medium body, and six of the eight single origins are washed, which is the combination that rewards a careful pour-over more than it rewards a pot left on a warmer.

Skip it if you drink your coffee with milk or want a dark roast, since the darkest thing here is medium-dark and there are only two of those. The blend bench is small at four. Anyone who wants the same recipe every month will find the origin side of this shelf moving underneath them.

Frequently Asked Questions