sweet maria’s roasted

Is it right for a coffee buyer to ask producers who have traditionally Wet-Processed their coffees to suddenly Dry-Process  small lots?   The results from this week’s pairing would indicate that it is right, to a point.  The wonderful Wet-Process Centrals that we know and love should continue to have success but changing tastes and greater awareness about coffee processing in the coffee shops and roasters around the world clear a path for flavor profiles like these two coffees.  The Mexico Nayarit was roasted to around 437 degrees which took about 16 minutes on the Probat while the Guatemala Oriente behaved quite differently in the roaster with first crack coming on later (around 420 degrees) and finally being dumped at 442 degrees at about 16:30 minutes. One thing is that these coffees achieve the right balance between fruit and chocolate when taken darker than their wet proccessed brethren, so both were roasted to Full City levels.  Both coffees have a wonderful appearance in the green state with amber skins on a few beans and when roasted have a fruited berry dry fragrance and sweet chocolate flavors in the cup.  Here at Sweet Maria’s we try to think outside what is normally done for one purpose: outstading quality in the cup.  When Tom and I cupped the results from these two roasts we were both smiling at the strange experience of drinking Central American coffees with distinctly African and Indonesian flavor characteristics, we think this kind of dismantling of “received wisdom” is an important part of understanding the wonderful crop that coffee has become.  As long as the Dry-Processing of coffee is done in the proper manner with great attention to detail and storage there is no telling what new flavor profiles might emerge.   As we all know, quality begins at the farm level and as home roasters we can ensure that each lot we purchase can reveal the hard work of the farmer and miller.  This pairing proves you can teach new regions old tricks with fantastic results. –Josh

In some coffee taster’s lexicon, “fruity” means the coffee is tainted with fruit, and “fruited” means a coffee is graced by positive fruit notes. We don’t exactly see the difference in terms of these two words, but the question of fruit flavors emerging in a coffee context is critical. Is it a good quality? Is it fresh, aromatic, sweet fruit? Is it ripe, or is it over-ripe, fermenty, vinegary fruit? And there’s a side argument as well: did the fruit flavors come from well-prepared coffee, or did it emerge in a process where the coffee had too much contact with the mucilage of the coffee cherry. (This might happen in over-fermenting, in a hybrid process such as Indonesia wet-hulling, or in poorly executed dry-processing). Here we have an example of the wet-hulled Flores, and the dry-processed Bonko Black Sun of Ethiopia. Now obviously, since these are coffees we offer here at Sweet Maria’s, we have decided these are both POSITIVE fruit-laden coffees. We want to compare the nature of the fruits in these, and how they come out against the backdrop of other flavors, which are very different in these two lots. To preserve the maximum fruit in the cup, these were both roasted to City+ (medium) … the Flores to 430f and the Bonko to a mere 423f. The fruit of the Flores appears in a low acid context, and the roast flavor from the lighter roast is more “nut and mild caramel” than the chocolate bittersweets that would emerge if we took it to 440f or so. It’s a slightly pulpy fruit, not so aromatic, a little flat (is that the expression of the low acidity though? I think so). The Ethiopia Bonko Black Sun has a more sweet, jammy fruited aromatic. Still, this more articulate and higher toned fruit (against a more acidic backdrop) is on the rustic end … this is a ripe fruitiness. It’s a bit winey too, but vinegary wine? No! Of these two, I would say the Flores Manggarai is more edgy, more fruity rather than fruited, to use other peoples language. Both of these fruity coffees derive from processing, but not mis-processing. And both do not fall into the category of fermenty, vinegar or sour rotten fruit. Believe me, I have cupped a lot of those, and am happy to spare you the pain. (But… our next “Thumbs Down” selection will be a fermenty Ethiopia Dry-Process coffee, so if you want to experience a coffee that has “crossed the line”, check back in a month or so.)