Upper Left Roasters

Upper Left Roasters opened in the summer of 2015 on the southeast side of Portland, Oregon, and its own site credits Katherine Harris with starting it. The catalog splits down the middle. Six single origins, six blends, 12 coffees active in all, which puts blends at exactly half the shelf and makes the house style as much about combination as about sourcing.

Four of the six single origins are processed natural and two are washed. That ratio explains most of the fruit in the tasting notes, since fruit-forward drying leaves more of the cherry behind in the cup than a washed lot does.

Sourcing spreads wide and thin. Brazil, Burundi, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, and Rwanda each supply exactly one coffee, which means half the bench comes from Africa and half from Latin America with no repeat visits anywhere. Prices run $22 to $30 at the house size of 10.1 ounces, with the median at $23.50. One coffee in the lineup is caffeine free.

Single Origins

Blends

Roast Profile & Flavor Range

The roast range here is narrow. Seven of the 12 coffees are medium, three are medium-light, and two are medium-dark. Nothing is roasted light and nothing goes dark, so the entire catalog lives inside three adjacent steps of a five-step scale.

Acidity averages just under medium while body runs above it, the arrangement that produces a rounder cup with a soft edge. Natural processing leads the single origins four to two over washed, and the origin map runs one lot apiece across six countries. The 10.1 ounce bag holds the pricing steady, $22 at the low end and $30 at the high end, with most of the list sitting within a dollar or two of the $23.50 median.

What Upper Left Roasters Coffees Tend to Taste Like

Vanilla is the most common note on the list, named in three coffees, which is a soft and creamy place for a catalog to center itself. Dark chocolate follows in two, with cocoa nib and plain chocolate rounding out that side of the wheel.

The fruit runs red and orange. Stone fruit is named twice, and black cherry, cherry, apple, baked orange, and candy orange peel each appear once, so the fruit tends toward the cooked and candied end rather than the raw and acidic one. Caramel and almond butter fill the gap between the sweet notes and the roasty ones. Read the whole vocabulary at once and the cups come across as dessert-shaped, more vanilla and cooked orange than lemon and jasmine.

Why Buy Upper Left Roasters

• A roast range with no extremes: All 12 coffees fall between medium-light and medium-dark, which makes the catalog predictable across brew methods.

• Naturals over washed: Four of the six single origins are processed natural, and the fruit notes follow directly from that choice.

• Even split with blends: Six blends and six single origins give CoffeeByMe both a house-style option and an origin option from the same roaster.

• Vanilla as the house note: It shows up in three of the 12 coffees, more than any other flavor, and it sets the tone for a list that reads closer to a pastry case than a fruit stand.

Is Upper Left Roasters Right for You?

This is a comfortable list. Every coffee sits within one step of medium, the body runs fuller than the acidity, and the flavor language leans on vanilla and cooked fruit, which together describe a cup that takes milk well and forgives a sloppy brew ratio. Half the catalog is blends, so consistency is part of the offer.

Look elsewhere if you want light roasting, because there is none at all. Look elsewhere too if you buy by origin, since six countries share six coffees and none of them gets a second slot. A drinker who wants to compare two lots from the same region will have to wait for a rotation.

Frequently Asked Questions