Drava Field Coffee FIRST LIGHT – Rwanda Filter 250 g

Early start • clear sky • quiet hour. First Light is the lightest coffee in the line — the one for the hour before the radio comes on. A washed Bourbon from the hills of southern Rwanda: bright, clean, tea-like, with crisp fruit instead of weight. Field strength rating: IP54 — awake, not wired. Tasting notes Apple, lemon, Ceylon black tea. Light and refreshing; drink it black. The acidity is the point here — a green-apple snap up front, lemon in the middle, and a dry, tannic black-tea finish that makes you want the next sip. Milk flattens it; sugar is unnecessary. If your idea of coffee is dark and heavy, start with Uptime 99.9 and come back to this one. The coffee Origin: Rwanda, Huye district, Southern Province — Simbi Washing Station, producer Abdul Rudahunga, 1,800–2,000 m a.s.l. Variety: Bourbon Processing: washed Composition: 100% arabica, cupping score 85.00, current harvest Roast: filter roast, medium-light Ingredients: 100% coffee, no additives Net weight: 250 g, whole bean Why Rwanda, why Bourbon Rwanda is small, high and volcanic — almost all of its coffee grows between 1,500 and 2,000 m on smallholder plots of a few hundred trees, and nearly all of it is Bourbon, the old heirloom variety that trades yield for sweetness and clarity. The washing-station model is what turned Rwandan coffee from a commodity into a specialty origin in the 2000s: farmers deliver ripe cherry the same day, the station pulps, ferments and sun-dries it on raised beds, and a single station's lot can be traced and cupped on its own. Simbi, in Huye, is one of the better-known stations in the south. At 1,800–2,000 m the cherries ripen slowly, which is where the dense, tea-like structure and the citrus come from. How to brew Roasted for filter: V60, Kalita, Chemex, AeroPress, Moccamaster, cold brew. Slightly higher water temperature and a fine-medium grind bring out the fruit. Pour-over (V60 / Kalita) — the intended use: 15 g to 250 g water, medium-fine grind, water 94–96 °C (hotter than for the Brazilians). Bloom 30–45 s with 50 g, then two pours. Target 2:30–3:00. Tastes sour or thin → grind finer; tastes harsh → grind coarser, not cooler. Chemex: 30 g to 500 g, medium, 95 °C, 3:30–4:00. The paper filter suits it — clean, bright, tea-clear. AeroPress: 15 g, medium-fine, 220 g at 94 °C, 1:30 steep, gentle press. Try it inverted for a slightly fuller cup. Moccamaster / batch brewer: works, 60 g per litre, but this coffee is at its best brewed by hand one cup at a time. Cold brew: 1:8, coarse, 14 h in the fridge. Comes out like iced black tea with lemon — the best cold brew in the line. Espresso: no — too light, too acidic under pressure. For espresso pick Payload, Blackout or Fireline. Caffeine and timing The gentlest in the line (IP54): a light roast of a dense, high-grown bean has plenty of caffeine on paper, but the cup is small, clean and drunk slowly, and it lands as alert rather than wired. It is the coffee for the hour you want to taste something, not for the hour you need to be dragged upright — that is Overland. Who it's for Surveyors, foresters, hunters, early-shift crews — people who are outside before anyone else and want to taste the coffee, not fight it. Also the one to give someone who says they "don't like coffee": it tastes like nothing they have been served at a petrol station. Roasted in Poland Drava Field Coffee is roasted to order by a specialty roastery in Kraków, in small batches, from beans graded above 80 points SCA. Packed in a one-way-valve bag with the roast date on the label. For best results use within 6 weeks of roasting. Storage Keep the bag sealed, away from light and heat. Light roasts lose their aromatics faster than dark ones, so this is the coffee to drink first if you bought several. Grind right before brewing — the citrus is the first thing to go when ground coffee sits. First Light vs. the rest of the line First Light — Rwanda washed, apple and tea, lightest in the line. The morning pour-over. Uptime 99.9 — Honduras, balanced and clean. The desk and night-shift filter. Overland — Brazil natural, caramel and cocoa, highest caffeine. The thermos and road-trip filter. Payload / Blackout / Fireline / Stand-To — espresso roasts for machines and moka pots. See the whole line: Drava Field Coffee. FAQ Is it ground? No — whole bean only, so it stays fresh. For a light roast this matters more than for any other coffee in the line. Why is it sour? It is not sour, it is bright — but if it tastes sharp rather than juicy, the grind is too coarse or the water too cool. Go finer and hotter. Decaf? Not in this line. All seven are caffeinated; this is the gentlest. Roast date? Printed on the label. Orders are roasted to demand, so you receive a current batch, not shelf stock. What is IP54 on the bag? Our own field strength scale, not a certification — see below. IP54 is our field strength rating — a measure of kick, not an ingress protection certification. For protective cases that actually carry an IP67 rating, see our Peli range.