Ethiopia Koke Shalaye G1 | ESPRESSO

103 Coffee didn't start as roasters, they started as competitors. Ken Wong, Irvine Quek, and Jewel Ting met through Malaysia's barista competition circuit back in 2014. But instead of riding the competition wave indefinitely, they shifted focus. By 2017, they'd built their own roastery. They work directly with farms, Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, wherever the harvest looks promising, and develop profiles based on what the beans actually want to express, not what's trendy or easy to sell. Sometimes that means a bright, fruit-forward filter roast. Sometimes it's a dense, syrupy espresso. Depends on the lot. They approach roasting the way they approached competition: methodically, obsessively, with respect for the process. Malaysia's specialty scene has grown a lot in the past decade, and 103 Coffee has been part of that push.