Fordo journal
4 min read · July 17, 2026
Our Tier III reserve lots spend up to 300 hours in fermentation. Our Tier I daily spends almost none. That is the real difference between the tiers: how far the processing goes, not how good the coffee is. All three tiers pass the same cupping table before they touch the Giesen W6A.
So the question is not which tier is best. It is which tier matches what you actually like drinking, what you brew on, and what you want to spend per cup.
Tier I is clean, washed-process comfort coffee. Timor Leste Full Washed is the reference point: grown fully organic at Ermera Farm, 1,200-1,600 MASL, cupping nutty, cocoa powder, low acidity. It is the first filter we hand to espresso drinkers, because nothing about it argues with you.
Pick Tier I if you drink coffee every morning without thinking about it too hard, if fruit-forward cups read as sour to you, or if you are just moving from instant or espresso into filter. It is also the cheapest way to drink well daily.
Tier II adds processing you can taste. Malabar Wine, from Arjasari in West Java, goes through an extended "wine" fermentation and lands on molasses, spice, and a juicy pineapple edge. Lampung Washed Mosto is fermented with mosto from a previous lot and comes out vibrant strawberry. Still coffees you can drink daily. Just not ones you will mistake for anyone else's.
Pick Tier II if Tier I has started tasting flat to you, or if you want fermentation character without paying reserve prices. These lots rotate with the harvest, which is the honest reason to try one now rather than later.
Tier III is where we let the processing get expensive. Bener Meriah Slow-Dry Natural 300H, from the Gayo highlands at 1,400-1,600 MASL, ferments for 300 hours in anaerobic drums and then dries in the sun for 10 days. Double Fermentation Petarangan comes from a Central Java farm we visited before we bought a single kilo: floral, passionfruit, raisin.
Pick Tier III if you brew for the cup itself, not the caffeine. Fair warning: these lots reward a decent grinder and a little attention. If you brew half-asleep at 6 a.m., spend the money on 2 bags of Tier II instead.
The gear decides this one, not taste. Espresso machine at home or in your cafe: buy from the espresso range. Commercial blends like Autumn Thunder are built to stay consistent through milk. Premium blends like Midnight Cookies are for drinking straight: dark chocolate and biscuit, espresso as dessert.
V60, Kalita, French press, or a batch brewer: buy from the filter tiers. Filter roasts are developed lighter and turn thin and sharp when forced through an espresso machine; espresso roasts brew heavy and flat as pour-over. For filter, our brew guides start every lot at 15g of coffee to 250g of water on a V60, 93°C.
If you own a kettle and a mug, you own enough. A drip bag is real ground coffee in a single-serve paper filter that hangs over the cup. Pour hot water through it and you are done. The Bener Meriah Drip Bag puts a Gayo single origin in that format; the Houseblend Drip Box covers 8 servings across our blend range.
Drip bags cost more per gram than whole bean and less than any cafe. They are the right answer for travel, the office, and anyone you are trying to convert who refuses to buy a grinder. Once they start asking what is in the bag, hand them a Tier I.