We get questions all the time about coffees that are low acid. Many specialty coffee purveryors are so enthusiastic about over-the-top, high acid coffees that the concept of a low acid, yet sweet cup seems quaint or boring. I actually prefer more low acid coffees, as they are gentler on the tummy, and when roasted properly have very fine attributes, they just don’t hit you over the head. The Sumatra is a fair trade organic from the Arinagata co-op and takes a wide range of roasts. I decided to go for the Full City level to bring out the bittersweet and rustic notes. The Peru Organic Cusco Canelon is from the Capacy co-op and is lush and sweet but wouldn’t win any cupping competititions. The wonderful almond overtones and nectarine hints are prevelant in this City++ roast. Hope you enjoy these two examples of low acid coffee, I know your stomach will!
Here we are comparing two different fruity coffees–half way around the world from each other. First, the Brazil Moreinha Formosa “Raisin” Coffee is produced by a rare processing method; the ripe coffee fruit is allowed to dry on the coffee tree, a technique only possible in an arid climate that has a dramatic shift from wet to dry seasons, and plots with good sunlight exposure, to ensure even drying. After harvest, the coffee is put on raised beds for additional drying, in the African tradition. This results in amazing body (expected), intense chocoalte and great rustic sweetness. Roasted to Full City. The second coffee is an Ethiopia Dry Processed Yirga Cheffe. This lot of somewhat unknowable provenance (long complex story) is incredible with peach, apricot and berry notes. Roasted to City+.
This week we have two microlot coffees - one from our friends in Costa Rica, Helsar Villa Sarchi Solis - and the other from Honduras, an organic coffee produced by the COCOSAM cooperative. The Costa Rican coffee is milled by Beneficio Helsar, and farmed by Roger Solis. It is a 100% Villa Sarchi varietal and has mild coffee with great balance and peachy tea notes as it cools. The Honduran coffee is from a farmer named Michelle Corrales Guevara and comes from a record high altitude of 1600 meters. The dry fragrance from the grounds is very caramelly, with hints of pralined nut and toffee as well. In the cup, the lighter roast levels also have a distinct honey-drenched sweet flavor, a lemony-bright snap, and a little bit of jasmine tea flavor. It’s very pleasant, lively and clean! Hope you enjoy these two coffees produced by two farmers who share a pride of craft in producing great coffees. City+
With this pairing we are matching up the Ethiopia Moplaco with one of our special Kenya lots, the Tambaya. The Ethiopia Moplaco is a remarkable aromatic coffee with complex estery high notes. The cup has a soft, full mouthfeel, and ample sweetness. It’s a surprisingly silky body for a Yirga Cheffe, which can sometimes be a little thin. Apricot and peach notes emerge, sweet stone fruits, along with the honey and floral notes found in the aromatics. The Kenya Tambaya is outstandingly bright, yet balanced. There are pink grapefruit citrus notes, jasmine tea floral flavors, and a light brown sugar sweetness. As it cools, toasted almond essence comes out, peach and apricot stone fruits, Earl Grey tea in the finish. While it has a bracing finish, it is milder overall in acidity than some of our other lots, and complex in it’s estery floral and fruit characteristics as well. Roasted to City+: Final temperature of 422 degrees, and roast times around 15 minutes.
In this pairing we are using coffees from two farms that have been around a long long time, a Peaberry lot from the Matalapa Estate in El Salvador, and a Bourbon lot from the Puerta Verde estate, Antigua, Guatemala. I am not sure if the fact that the farms have been around so long contributes to their “classic cup” profile or not, but that is the case with both of these coffees. Both are truly classic Central American coffees. With the Matalapa Peaberry lot, the cup is vividly bright, with bracing orange acidity, laced with slight floral bits. As it cools there is bright and dynamic lemon with a cinnamon note. The Puerte Verde Bourbon is a classic Bourbon cup, dense mouthfeel, restrained flavors, classic brightness and balance. Both coffees were roasted to City+ with final thermoprobe temperature of 422 degrees and roast times of 15 minutes.
In this pairing we are placing two coffees with very different types of body side by side: Sulawesi Tana Toraja Ke’pe and India Organic Jasmine Yellikudige. Both were roasted to Full City with final thermoprobe temperatures between 434-436 and roast times of 15 minutes. Sulawesi Ke’pe has rustic sweetness with an oily body, well balanced for an Indonesian coffee: both intense and clean. India Yellikudige is savory with a more rounded mouthfeel and smoother body due to the wet processing used for this lot. Brewing method plays a big part in developing body in the cup, and a French press brew of any coffee will likely have more body than a drip brew. When we tasted these two side by side brewed in the Technivorm the India jumped out as having more body than the Sulawesi. This is interesting since normally wet-hulled coffees like Ke’pe have more body than fully washed lots like Yellikudige, not so in this case.
Honey or “Miel” refers to pulp natural coffees which tend to have more body and less acidity than their wet process equivalents, and can have a cleaner, more uniform quality than full natural dry-process coffees. First we roasted Costa Rica Tarrazu – Montes de Oro to Full City with final thermoprobe temperatures of 433 degrees and roast time of 15:30. Next we roasted Costa Rica “Café Sin Limites” to a City+ level with final thermoprobe temperature of 428 degrees and roast time of 15 minutes. Both of these coffees excel at a wide range of roast levels but I tried to keep them as close as possible for comparison’s sake. In the cup the Montes de Oro has a wonderful buttery sweetness compared with a more complicated brightness in the “Café Sin Limites”. In this instance I think the Oro is a milder version of “Miel” than the Sin Limites, both reveal the effects of this processing technique and how certain flavors can be intensified.
We are revisiting this pairing idea since it is such a fundamental issue in coffee: how much the varietal character of the plant influences the cup flavor. First up we have El Salvador Siberia Estate Pacamara. We roasted this batch to a City+ level to highlight the cultivar flavor profile; this is tricky to do with this type of bean because I needed to stop the roast while 1st crack was still audibly ocurring. This meant final thermoprobe temperature of 420 degrees and roast times of 15 minutes using slightly smaller batch sizes than we normally do. Next we roasted Guatemala Finca San Jose Ocana which was roasted more in the Full City range and is a mighty dense little bean. So final thermoprobe temps were 434 degrees with roast times approaching 16 minutes. As for the cup comparison, the Pacamara has a floral sweetness, while the Bourbon has a maltier sweetness. These two are ideal examples of the variances in flavor due to cultivar.
This week we roasted the same coffee: Kenya Nyeri AA – Kagumo Coop to two different levels. The first batches were roasted to City+ and the resultant cup is super sweet and wonderful, really the ideal roast level for this coffee. It was counterintuitive to roast the rest of the batches all the way to Full City as the cup changes considerably and more bittersweet notes dominate. As Tom mentions in the review the profile becomes a bit more aggressive at darker roast levels and this might suit some tastes very well. But for me, the lighter roast of this coffee is so much more flavorful and sweet. See what you think and try this experiment with your own roasting, so much can be learned from roasting the same coffee in different ways. City+ roast took 13 minutes, final thermoprobe temp. of 420, Full City took 14 minutes final thermoprobe temp. of 438. If you examine both coffees visually there doesn’t seem to be much difference but the cup really reveals the subtle shifts in flavor that occur when you go from one roast level to the next. Try experimenting with blending the two roasts together before brewing for yet another flavor profile.
So, this week we may have completely lost our minds. The headline might read: “Sweet Maria’s roasts Robusta and pairs it with Sumatra coffee, are they insane?!” I roasted the Sumatra Organic Lampahan -Bonkawan Coop to three different levels (City+, FC, and FC+–426, 431, and 436 degrees respectively via thermoprobe) since I was doing three batches, I then blended these together to try to capture the entire flavor range this coffee possesses. The cup has wonderful prune-like sweetness to compliment the heavy body and low acidity. I roasted Rwanda Wet-Process Robusta to Full City with final thermoprobe temperature of 440 degrees. Try brewing these two coffees together: we tested a 50/50 ratio as well as one with just 1 scoop of Robusta to 4 scoops of Sumatra. This is not normally what we like to drink around here but my In-Laws would love to dump cream and sugar in a cup of this before a day of fishing on the lake. Ain’t it funky now.
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