Small-batch · hand-roasted · Portland, OR
We source single-origin beans from family farms at elevation, roast them in small 10 kg batches on a vintage Probat drum, and ship within 48 hours. You taste the difference.
The story behind the cup
Ember & Soil was born in 2019 when former wildland firefighter Nora Calloway traded her crew saw for a roasting drum. After six seasons watching forests burn in Oregon, she found herself drawn to a different kind of fire—the controlled, deliberate heat that unlocks sweetness from a raw green bean.
She spent two years traveling to farms in Ethiopia, Colombia, and Sumatra, building direct relationships with the families who grow our beans. Today every bag you open was roasted by Nora or one of our two-person crew, packed by hand, and shipped to your door within two days of leaving the drum. Nothing sits in a warehouse. Nothing is compromised.
We keep the menu tight so every roast gets our full attention. Each coffee is available until the lot runs out—then it’s gone.
Grown in the cradle of coffee’s birthplace, this natural-process lot is sun-dried on raised beds for 21 days. The result is a cup so fruit-forward it feels almost illicit—like eating a strawberry at altitude.
From the Bustamante family’s 4-hectare farm in Huila’s fertile valley. Honey-processed with the mucilage left on during drying, giving this medium roast a silky body and a lingering sweetness that holds long after the last sip.
Wet-hulled by the traditional Giling Basah method unique to Sumatra. Dark, brooding, and unapologetically earthy— this is the coffee for a grey Portland morning. Roasted just shy of second crack for maximum complexity.
A rare Typica varietal grown by an indigenous Zapotec cooperative in the Sierra Juárez highlands. Washed and meticulously sorted by hand, this coffee has a clarity that lets every note sing cleanly. Our seasonal favorite for pour-over.
No automation. No guesswork. Every roast is profiled by hand and logged against our flavor targets.
Every shipment is hand-sorted on a sorting table. We reject anything with defects, inconsistent density, or off-smells before a single bean enters the drum.
We dial in a unique roast profile for each lot—adjusting charge temp, turning point, rate-of-rise, and development time across 8–12 trial roasts until the cup is right.
Our 1972 Probat UG22 holds heat like a cast-iron skillet. We roast in 10 kg batches, logging temperature every 30 seconds, and drop at the exact second the profile calls for it.
Freshly roasted beans need 24–48 hours to off-gas. We cup every roast at 24h against our benchmark. Only passes get bagged and shipped to you.
“We never roast more than we can ship in 48 hours. Freshness isn’t a marketing word here—it’s an operational constraint.”
— Nora Calloway, speaking at the 2024 Roasters Guild Symposium
Whether you want to place a wholesale inquiry, ask about a specific origin, or just tell us how your morning cup went— we read every message. Usually within 24 hours.