In this pairing, we are offering two coffees that are different varietals, Pacamara and Bourbon. Bourbon is an heirloom Arabica varietal from Reunion Island off the coast of Madagasgar. Pacamara is a more recently developed hybrid. In a thread on the Home Coffee Roasting Forum, Tom has posted with a PDF of an article from the El Salvador Coffee Consejo with more on the origin for both varietals. Besides the differences in the plant itself, how it is grown and where, there is a specifc flavor associated with both these varieties, a profile that can dominate the regional effects,. i.e. Bourbon or Pacamara coffee will tend to taste more like other coffees of the same variety, rather than other varieties grown in the same region. For the El Salvador Siberia Estate Bourbon we targeted somewhere between City+ and Full City. Final thermaprobe temperature readouts were 436 degrees, with roast times in the 15 minute time frame. Roasts were taken a bit darker for the El Salvador Montanita Pacamara into the Full City range with final thermoprobe temperatures of 443 degrees and roast times around 15:30 minutes. In cupping each coffee only a few hours after roasting there are some striking differences in these two varietals grown in the same country. The Bourbon has a bit of the orangey zing Tom mentions in the review and a more mild flavor profile over all. The Pacamara seems more complex, with definite acidity that puckers the cheeks a bit balanced with more foresty notes. Generally, we want you to be able to compare these coffees at the same roast level, here the Bourbon is markedly lighter than the Pacamara but I think both are outstanding coffees at these roast levels and the Bourbon in particular has great flavor both lighter and darker than I roasted it today.
Mexico, Honduras; two origins with sullied reputations for quality coffee. Most know Mexican coffee, Oaxaca and Chiapas in particular. But there are few small “Estate” type farms in Mexico that focus on quality. Instead, the better coffees come from vast cooperatives of small-holder farmers. Honduras has both small single-family farms with their own mills, and a strong cooperative system in the Marcala region, where most of our lots originate. So what is the quality potential? First up we have a new lot: Mexico Organic Chiapas Proish Coop. this cup has a clean fruited character with a touch of cherry vanilla flavor, we went for a City+ roast to highlight the refined character of this coffee. The Mexico is paired with Honduras FTO Marcala -Beneficio Santa Rosa a more nutty flavor profile with a bit of apple acidity. We roasted this one in the Full City range to bring out the cocoa powder flavors that compliment the cup so well. This week we were trying for 16 minute roast times and the final thermoprobe temperatures were in the 432-435 range for both coffees. Here is my straight-talk for these origins: “Mexico, Honduras, let’s be frank. You will never be Kenya, a bright and intensely powerful coffee. But your clean, light-bodied, simple flavor profile can be a nice relief from the overbearing flavors of other origins, of earthy and pungent Sumatras, bright Yirga Cheffe from Ethiopia, leathery Yemens. So keep it up!”
Roast Coffee Pairings #3: Africanized: Taste the Future.
Wet-process coffees from Africa can be surprisingly different: Kenyas are over-the-top acidic, while Rwandas have clean and balanced flavor profiles. The Burundi Kayanza Bwayi No.7 lot is quite similar to the latter: it is sweet, faultless, and has the beautiful aroma you might find in Rwandan Bourbon coffees. Ugandas are something quite different; generally available as large, homogenized lots, Ugandas have a rustic fruity sweetness. I happened to find this large lot (Uganda Organic Bugisu) with really nice lemony cup character, a rarity in Uganda. For this pairing, I thought it would be interesting to look at these two, very different lots side-by-side to compare the cup flavors, and to see a bit of the future. Within the next few years I think we will see micro-regional Uganda offerings, as we have this year for the first time from Burundi, and as we did beginning several years ago from Rwanda. While these are both wet-processed coffees, roasted to the same City+ level (424 f bean temp measure on Probat roaster), they are quite different. The Uganda is a nice cup, and more typical of East African coffees. It’s a little funky, has heavier body, fruit and a slight herbal quality. The Burundi really shows the potential of East Africa; it’s a bourbon cultivar (like much of Rwanda coffee) and a very dense bean. It has zero defects (the Uganda had some under-ripes, some quakers, which we manually removed to some degree), and a refined cup. It reminds me more of a wet-process Central than an African coffee, with clean crisp brightness, raisin fruit note, lighter body. I wouldn’t score one of these higher than the other because in their own right, each cup is excellent. But the Uganda tastes more like a dry-process coffee with it’s definite fruitiness, and the Burundi is a very well prepared wet-process from a great varietal. - Tom
I was looking at Google Earth and pondering the relationship between the excellent coffees of Northern Peru and the odd absence of Ecuadorean coffee in the United States. We have a really nice lot from Ecuador now, the Puyamgo Loja, so things are changing indeed; but the potential of Ecuador coffee, at least in terms of small lots from particular regions, has not been fully developed. From the north of Peru, we have the Peru FTO San Ignacio Cajamarca region coffee. Geographically these coffees are not that far from each other, and are grown in similar terrain. But the differences in flavor offer 2 interesting interpretations of an Andean coffee appellation. The Peru has a wonderful candy-like sweetness when kept in the City+ range and that’s what we were shooting for here, final roast times were around the 14:30 minute mark with final thermoprobe temperatures right around 427 degrees. The Ecuador is a more balanced cup at City+ with a wide range of flavors harmoniously working together to satisfy–again we went for City+ with roast times in the 14-15 minute range and final thermoprobe temperatures of 428 degrees. Checking back two days after roasting I am very impressed with the Ecuador lot we just brewed up here in the warehouse. Yesterday on barely 24 hours rest the cup was a little bitter, and not quite as developed as it is today. As I take my last sip I can taste the wonderful combination of bright alto notes and the nice body that makes this a really great “drinking” coffee. What do you mean, all coffee is for drinking isn’t it? Well, yes, however some origins excel at producing great mild coffees that have the right touch of both sweetness and heft. Hope you enjoy two great lots from these Andean neighbors, we already new Peru could produce stellar lots to rival pricey Colombian coffees, now we must recognize the potential for Ecuador to join the party!
Raisin coffee is a term for dry-processing, where the coffee is allowed to dry (partially or wholy) on the tree, before it is picked. It is only possible in a few coffee growing areas where the weather changes dramatically, where the dry season starts when the coffee is ripe on the tree. In the past, picking dried coffee from the tree was reserved for the end of the season, when all coffee cherries, ripe or not, dried or not, are “strip-picked” off the branches indiscriminately. This is called the Repela, or Rebusca in some places, the final harvest, and the quality of this coffee is very low. But a true Raisin coffee is picked with care, choosing only uniformily “tree-dried” cherries that have a raisin-like brown appearance. The cherries are then carefully sorted to remove defect or under-ripe coffee. A true Raisin coffee takes a lot of work. We have two lots from Brazil, one that is a special project on a designated plot of a larger fazenda, the Brazil Moreninha Formosa Raisin Coffee Microlot. The other is from a very large coffee farming operation, not a micro-lot at all: Brazil Ipanema Tree-Dry Process. The fruity flavors associated with tree-dry coffee, from the longer contact the fruit and skin has with the coffee seed inside, is much more apparent in the Moreninha, but both feature heavy body, low acidity, chocolate roast taste, and a very pleasurable tasting experience. As for the roast level, I really tried to push the Ipanema right up to the Full City+ level with a few snaps of second crack heard as the beans hit the cooling tray, this ended up being nearly 450 degrees by thermoprobe. For the Moreninha I wanted to ensure that the fruitiness was still evident so I ended those batches safely in the Full City range at 445 degrees. Since I was roasting slightly smaller batches than normal the roast times were right around 14 minutes.
We’re having a little bit of fun with this week’s roast pairing and you are only supposed to be reading this post if you’ve already tried both coffees. Take a guess as to what origin you think these two coffees are from. Both were roasted to the same level, somewhere between City+ and FC. In coffee #1 you should notice a nice brightness in this very clean, lively cup. There is also a lovely floral quality and great medium body out of this Wet Processed lot. Do you know what it is? Answer: Sulawesi AA Wet-Process Toarco. That’s right this is a Sulawesi coffee with as much in common with a Guatemala flavor profile as other Sulawesi coffees. Which brings us to coffee #2. Here we have a much more robust bodied coffee with earthy qualities that should be much easier to figure out. Can you tell where it is from? Answer: Sulawesi Enrekang “Mt. Alla”. We were really trying to fool you all in to thinking that the Toarco was from a different region because it is the most radically different Sulawesi we’ve ever found. There is a striking difference between the Wet-Process that is done with the Toarco, and the Wet-Hulling that is done with the “Mt. Alla”. The former creates a very clean, brilliant cup while the latter leads to a more brooding, rustic cup. Hopefully you enjoy having two such different coffees from the same spot on Earth, please let us know on the RoastBlog what you think of this mystery roast idea. It is a good way to challenge your coffee knowledge and encourages a greater understanding of how processing plays such a key role in the cup results.
Nutty Coffee! Are nuts good? Sure, but in coffee? Are nut flavors just a function of a lighter roast? Well, partially, but it’s about the coffee too. And lots from very different origins have different types of nut flavors. For this selection, we chose two extremes, even though they are neighbors. The frigid, highest reaches of Bolivia (remember, La Paz is the world’s highest capital city) are so extremely different than the warm, rolling plains of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, but both coffees have nutty character. And yet they display it in completely different ways against a completely different backdrop of flavors. This week we roasted Bolivia FTO SHG EP Caranavi and Brazil Cerrado DP Fazenda Aurea. Both coffees were kept light, in the City+ range. Each batch took about 15 minutes to roast and we used a profile that builds heat steadily through the first 2/3 of the roast cycle and then dialed it way down to ease through first crack. The Brazil was finished when the thermoprobe read 427-430 depending on the batch and the Bolivia finished a tad earlier around 425 degrees via thermoprobe. We were definitely trying to keep these coffees on the nutty side and stay away from the chocolate flavors that admittedly add a nice balance to both of these coffees when roasted to FC+ or therabouts. But we are nuts for light roasted coffee here at SM’s (hee hee) and wanted to highlight the lovely, malty nuttiness in the Brazil, and the more floral, vanilla bean nutty flavor in the Bolivia. Hope you enjoy it; if you don’t, you’re nuts.
Sweetness, Dear Sweetness. If there is one quality of good coffee that can’t be underrated, it is sweetness. You might not notice it at first (especially since bittering flavors are intrinsic to any coffee), but an absence of sweetness is akin to the absence of acidity. The cup is lacking without it. To illustrate how much sweetness can be a good thing we present one of our all time favorite coffees around these parts Costa Rica Helsar Organic Naranjo. When you smell the aroma as it brews, you can find lemon and citrus, piquant, delicate sour notes. But paired with that is a clean, articulate sweetness in the cup. Pay attention to the finish, the aftertaste, and I hope you will find a refined sweetness as the coffee flavors fade. If you don’t, it is time to clean your coffee brewer! We could have chosen many extreme coffees that are aggressive and unsweet, Indonesia wet-hulled types, an Aged coffee, Monsooned, etc. But that wouldn’t be fair. While the differences are more subtle, we wanted to chose a wet-processed coffee from the Central America neighborhood, one with a modicum of sweetness, ranging toward the baker’s chocolate roast flavor. For this coffee I select the Guatemala San Jose Pinula -La Trinidad. Again, pay attention to the finish’ this coffee has a lot of body, and a very attractive chocolate bittering aftertaste, not without sweetness, but certainly more in the realm of “pleasant bittering” flavors. I know, this is not a “hit you over the head” obvious difference. But I think you can observe the difference if you evaluate them side-by-side. As for the roast we have taken the Guatemala to a nice City+ roast with a very gentle roast profile with greatly reduced heat at the end of the roast cycle. The Costa Rica Helsar was roasted just a shade lighter, still in the City+ range to highlight the wonderful sweetness in this lot. This pairing should be an outstanding example of the degrees of sweetness available in two Central American coffees, Sweetness, we love you.
Mohka Java is the historic grandfather of all blends. The Dutch were the first to take coffee from Yemen to their colony of Batavia on the island of Java. It was clear that the same seedstock was quite different; the Yemen intense and brighter than the soft, full-bodied Java. Some genius thought a mix of the two would strike an interesting balance, and voila! So what is the benefit of mixing a coffee with one distinct flavor profile with another, and what is the right way to go about deciding the in what proportions? Or are they just better unblended, as two unique and different coffees? Is a low-acid, full-bodied Java more to your liking, or a wild, intense Arabian coffee. We offer our Yemen Mokha Sana’ani and our Java Kajumas Organic Taman Dadar to for this test. We ask you to brew them each separately and note the cup. Then to try the classic 50-50 blend of the two. Experiment with 75-25 percentages, to see if the effect. We hope to get your feedback via the blog too. As far as the roast goes, the Java was roasted to Full City+ with just the slightest hint of second crack: 16 minutes and 441 degrees by thermoprobe. The Yemen was kept a bit lighter to try to bring out some of the fruited aspects of this lot, so I ended the roasts after 16 minutes at 437 degrees for a lighter version of Full City, hopefully.
The district of North Sumatra is actually SOUTH of Aceh Province. Does that make sense? Both Lintongs from the North Sumatra area around Lake Toba and Aceh coffees from the much smaller Lake Tawar have been sold as Mandhelings in the past. And the Mandheling area doesn’t even have coffee! But the flavors of these two are quite different; Lintongs have herbal notes and have been much brighter as of late, while Aceh coffees have classic body and flavors, but are perhaps less complex and more of a “blender.” How do two great lots from these areas rate side-by-side? We compare our Sumatra Grade One Mandheling and one of our great Sumatra Lintong Blue Batak coffees this week. Both coffees were roasted to the same final temp: 435 degrees by thermoprobe on the Probat, with roast times around 15 minutes. I was trying to roast a bit lighter than even the review recommends for these coffees to ensure we highlight the distinct differences in these two lots. And after cupping the results I am impressed with the herbal and almost sweet quality of the Blue Batak contrasted with the spicey and more bass-note Grade One Mandheling. You may notice how much lighter the Grade One Mandheling looks compared to the Blue Batak, part of this is due to the overall uneven roast color of the Mandheling and part is due to the fact that when I applied the same roast profile to both coffees, the Blue Batak ended up more in the Full City range instead of the target City+ roast. This just proves that roasting is not an exact science and the information from thermoprobes is only one indicator a roaster should use and not an absolute guage. The coffee pairing program has really put me to the test and we encourage all of you to grab a pair of coffees and try your hand at matching roast levels and comparting the results. The fun thing about this pair of coffees is that, on the one hand the Grade One Mandheling couldn’t look more motley in the green stage, while the Blue Batak could win a beauty contest it has been so carefully processed and sorted. No matter, once roasted, they both are stalwart examples of Sumatran coffee. -Josh
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