What’s in your cup this morning ?
Origin Colombia
Estate Café Granja La Esperanza
Farm Potosi
Varietal San Juan
Process Natural
Altitude 1,800-2,000 masl
Harvest January - April
I got it from my local shop. It’s got a really nice sultana smooth taste. Currently brewing it in a Aeropress 1:15 and diluting up to around a 320g cup. Really enjoying it at cooler temps.
Crankhouse, Cordillera de Fuego, anaerobic natural Caturra & Catuai - Initially hesitant & bracing myself due to the pungent, farmyard aroma off the beans, but absolutely delivers in every aspect on the flavour in cup. Complex, good perception of sweetness. Delicious! Like a coffee equivalent to mulled wine.
I’m not big fan of naturals, nor Cost a Ricans generally, but I love this.
13.6g ground at 32 on Wilfa flat, V60 02 with can strainer, 40g every 40s (each pour taking about 13s), 1st 2 pours direct on to the coffee bed, last 3 via can strainer. Dry bed 3:15 for this brew.
Mikari AA (Washed) (Kenya) from Coffee by the Casuals - two ways.
Moka Pot - really rich, lots of peach. Very smooth. Pre-boiled water and AP filter, but no ‘bloom’.
CCD - 18g + 300g - 32 on Niche. Still steeping, but based on brews this week, flavour is more balanced, not as in your face (as expected) - not much pineapple, but more acitidty alongside the peach.
Crown and Canvas - Brazil - Fazenda Pantano
On the bag: caramel, orange, praline, milk chocolate.
Another delicious coffee from these guys!
Espresso: the orange really shines through then makes way to the chocolate/caramel. Praline is on the aftertaste - on the breath? If that makes sense to anyone except me!
Flat white: this pushes the praline/chocolate to the front and the orange to the back. Really nice but I’m enjoying it too much as an espresso to have many more of them with milk, lovely though it is. 
Kelvinside coffee - Guatemalan
This one was one of two bags my partner gifted me for Christmas.
I’ve had a lot of problems getting a decent shot out of them, which is a shame because when I have I’ve been rewarded with really gorgeous caramel and mint!
Adding milk makes for a nice, if unremarkable flat white. One to be revisited me thinks - anyone else tried them?
Baldrick I have had Guatemalans (not from that roaster) and they can be difficult to get a good extraction from….worth it when you do though.
DavecUK good to know. They took a very fine grind. Had a few beautiful shots out of them and then wandered all over the place - same grind i could get to my 2:1 yield in 10 seconds, load up again and completely choked the machine.
Very likely my prep but I’ve been doing reasonably well up until this point.
I have had similar issues with some Guatemalan beans in the past- thought it was purely my ineptitude but am feeling reassured by yours and Dave’s observations.
I opened a bag of Monsooned Malabar from Atkinsons of Lancaster that has a roast date of 8/12 this morning. The beans look dark and oily, they stuck to my fingers as I handed them onto the scales for my 18g Aeropress morning fix. The bloom was the biggest I’ve ever seen and had to wait for a few moments before continuing the pour. The aroma came across very strong, burnt rubber and tar, but not in an unpleasant way (does that even make sense?). My immediate reaction was that I wasn’t going to like it. The first few sips of the hot black liquid didn’t allay my fears, but as the cup cooled I began to experience a thick liquid velvet that covers the inside of the mouth, the burnt rubber began to give way to dark treacle and aged leather.
Just pulled an espresso on the Europiccola; dark, rich, spicy, leather, treacle and a sort of pleasant mustiness and bitter dark chocolate. Not saying this is going to be a firm favourite, but I prefer this to the Christmas Blend I’ve just finished. Seems to me that MM is almost made for Christmas with it’s rich, dark, mysterious flavous and feel!
Crankhouse, Sebastian Ramirez, Finca el Placer, carbonic maceration natural Gesha, Colombia: Top notch, full of flavour, syrupy tropical berry/fruit, with almost a Smarties like note, hints of passion fruit in the finish. Clean. I maybe ground a tad fine, but still totally delicious. Definitely not one of those ‘wet air with a hint of ####…’ Geshas.
13.8g ground at 2 turns on a Feldgrind (will be going slightly coarser), Kalita 185, Buono kettle, bloom 20g/30s, then 50g every 30s via the Tricolate dispersion screen. This brew had a dry bed at 2:38.
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Not another Guatemalan….. 🙄
Coffee mongers, finca Bremen, Guatemala
Nectarine, dark choc, hazelnut.
Now technically I didn’t pick this one - I went to the roaster and told him what I didn’t want (another fruit bomb) and for him to pick 2 bags of what he’d been enjoying.
This is the first.
Have to say I’m really enjoying it. Just nicely balanced shot of espresso. The roast seems far more consistent than the last bag (from a different roaster) and was half the price!
Lovely acidity at the start, dark chocolate brings just the right amount of bitter and a long lingering hazelnut finish. Lovely mouthfeel without being too cloying.
I’d better line up another to make sure it wasn’t a fluke 😉
Coffee compass sweet bourbon blend
Huckleberry - Blue Orchid out of Denver Colorado.
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Ethiopian Rocko Mountain from Cofeee Compass. Naturally Processed. Got nice strawberry and peach notes; dark chocolate after taste for me.
The cup was rich, smooth and had a nice crisp acidity; they were just right. More importantly, unlike the Goats’ Peru and Ethiopian, there were no beehives and lingering negative bitterness. Very nice cup indeed.
1.4 JX turns, 20.1g:44.8g:28s; the group was at 90C and the boiler was set at 97C. The extraction looked even with no visible signs of dark patches in the puck. I used the IMS32 basket.
I am tempted to drop the temperature by 0.5C-1C to see what happens.
My observations of the beans looking at them under both LED and natural lights - the photo was taken under the LED light.
- Unless the the bag was from two separate batches of roasts, I would say it wasn’t evenly roasted - not significantly. Perhaps, the heating was turned off after the first crack.
- The colour of chaffs and chaff lines are not uniform, which support this. The surface colour of the beans look a bit uneven - more under natural light to me.
- I would still call this as a medium-dark roast not dark; I am struggling to see how this could be a medium roast. Perhaps, @DavecUK can throw some light to make a medium-roast case!
LMSC It’s very difficult to tell from a photo, especially one under LED light which has a poor CRI compared to natural light. It’s why I use an incandescent halogen light source at my roaster. On my monitor it looks on the darker side of medium, but again, it depends on camera white balance and monitor settings etc..
I would certainly think (and hope) the heating was turned off or reduced to “idle” after first crack, as the beans require little further heat input once 1st crack begins…if fact I give myself a fist bump if I get the heating off a little before first starts and move to a good and not overly vigorous first crack.
