Description
Crisp, clear jasmine and cane sugar aromatics dart among light nuts and sunflower seeds. Slight bodied, with a gentle, but substantial finish. The structure is a bit like what I imagine something built a group of Dozers would be: crisp, ordered, layered, almost airy, but sweet and compelling; a crisp spiny fruity tang that sits neat with the basic structure. Brisk apple (braeburn, fuji) and grape skin.

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Description
For years, I’ve cupped past Columbian coffees – not because they haven’t been good, some have been excellent, but because I only keep a relatively small selection of coffees at any one time and they have lacked a distinguishing quality that separated them from the other good and excellent coffees. So I bought other coffees.
But this one, grown by Maximino Gutierrez, is different than that. Possibly because it so cleanly caught my memory of first drinking good coffee. There’s a peculiar, subtle coffee-ness in it that encourages its flavors gently on the palete. Nuts – pistachio in particular – bring a buttery sweetness, tentatively salty, floated by sweet rose aromatics. This isn’t the more boastfully acidulous and structured coffees that I normally gravitate towards, but more like gracefully balanced Rwandan.

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Description
This’ll lower you into the soil, and wrap you with loamy goodness. Carefully stored for the past 3 years to develop a pretty unique coffee, it’s earthy, deeply peppered with woody cardamon, burnt caramel and brown sugar. It’s intense and lovely all at the same time. Aged coffees are a treat for me that hasn’t been much available for several years and am pretty excited about this little bit. Quite a treat for those who love the deeper, richer coffees.
*Limited availability

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1. Aged

Description
Here is one of those seasonally appropriate coffees, perfect as sun begins creeping around the clouds… earlier and earlier till you’re actually waking up sun sunlight. A touch of moist chill hangs still, but it’s a hopeful moment, where the comfort in the evenness of pralines and hazelnut flavors balance almost exactly with the highly structured, acidulous, tart-like sweetness. Jazz apples at their peak. White Peaches. This isn’t a dance of complexity, but rather a perfect arrangement of what is great about having both natures in a coffee. It wakes you up gently, but with purpose. And that’s what I am loving about this coffee. It’s gentle, exacting. An easy-going perfectionist.

Additional Notes
The Abakundakawa Cooperative mills coffee at the Rushahsi washing station. This particular lot is separated by the Duhingekawa Women’s Group.

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Description
I was listening to Spanish Guitarist Federico Aubele a few nights ago, and it struck me then that this was the tension that I feel in this coffee. There is unboasting beauty, subtle and mellow, but there’s also a sense of urgency that weaves through it… From the dry ground coffee, there’s clear, fresh cacao powder aromatics leaping forward. You’d think it should keep on and build on that intensity, but begin steeping, and the aroma turns more mellow, more like buttered toast. Sip, and the rich spices like clove, ceylon cinnamon, and a bit of mace makes is seem Mediterranean. Then pops the ripe huckleberries and fruit – a sweet cantaloupe-like richness, with plum and fully ripe stone fruit. Butterscotch, agave syrup follow close on the tails of everything else.For so much fruit, the acidity is well integrated by easily distinct flavors that finish proud and strong.

Additional Notes
Located in a remote area of the Sidamo district called Shakisso, on the Guji zone, largely known for large gold mines – an area of open conflict between growers and miners [what is the nature of this, history?]. For this lot, Haille Gebre has overseen the harvesting of only crimson-purple cherries, deeper than the typically red ripe indications – likely the impetus for the moniker ‘Maduro’ or Mature.

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1. Aged Sumatran, limited availability

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(this coffee is currently sold out)

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1. Kebado Wet-processed from Kebado, Sidamo, Ethiopia
2. New Coffee: Daterra Farms Espresso Reserve from Minas Gerais, Brazil
3. Daterra Farms Sweet Collection (from Minas Gerais, Brazil)

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1. Bonko Farm “Black Sun” from Dara Woreda, Sidamo, Ethiopia.
2. I Take It From Here.
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Light Streaming through Ponderosa Pines along the banks of the Metolius River

This was a casual morning cupping – one where it happens as you wake up… The beauty of this coffee pulled me immediately out of my frozen slumber. Yes, the air was chilled, felt like dry ice, but with bright morning light glinting off the Metolius River as it burbled by the site. I got full round fruits, melons playing in a bed of rich stone fruit (without any hint of starch). Intense flavor mingled with the clear bright yellow, almost white light coming through the tops of majestic Ponderosa Pines along the Green Ridge line.

On a plate in front of me, a slice of pan fried (in butter, of course) sourdough bread topped with Cheddar and slices of real Tomato. The Satisfying tartness of the sour starter, crispy and chewy, the caramelized / browned butters sweetness supports the bright marmalade-like fruitiness of this Nyeri district Kenyan. The fact that I stretched the Millard phase of the roast a tiny bit, giving the fruits a bit less clarity, but more intertwined complexity works well with the acidulous nature of good fresh tomatoes.

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1. Bonko Farm “Black Sun” from Dara Woreda, Sidamo, Ethiopia.
2. Kenya, Costa Rica & other important stuff
3. Kebado Wet-processed from Kebado, Sidamo, Ethiopia

On a somewhat side note, but still related, I do think that the air control isn’t set right. Even in the better roasts, there is a cloudiness to the flavors. They just aren’t as clear as I am expecting. It’s perhaps simply nothing more than my expectations, and looking for that unattainable, but I do think that the air isn’t being drawn through the roast chamber well enough. Noting to pay more attention to this in future roasts.

Anyway, I roasted three different coffees to help Christy and me re-enter daily life after our honeymoon (5 days on the Metolious River in Central Oregon. The whole week was totally amazing!). I’ve roasted two of them before with good results and one with not so good results… They are:

El Salvadore Matalapa Estate
Roasted 27 July, 2008

27 July '08 roast of El Salvadore Matalapa Estate

Cupping Notes:
29 July ’08 (~36 hrs)
Base flavors are nut – hazel mostly. There are hints of other flavors in there, but it is somewhat muddled together. Slightly harsh acidity wrapped up into some nice fruit flavors. But off balance.

Roasting Notes:
10:23 is really too long to hit 1rst crack. It’s clear from the cupping that it dried out the coffee too much, baking it, and setting of some internal scorching. Visually, verified in some beans.
What the hell, I’ll blame that on poor planning and not having the guage hooked up yet. This was the last batch roasted, and jumping from 150g to 250… I just didn’t get it moving quick enough. The beans were turning yellow – indicating the end of the drying phase – about 1:30 past where I would normally expect that.
Once I turned up the gas, things progressed fine, at least on paper. The duration of 1rst crack was nice and short. The progression of the roast after that was about right. I still think I held it in a bit long, but honestly, the damage was done before I passed 5 minutes. The beans were too dried out to really develop good aciduous flavors without also turning the insides darker than the outer surface.

Rwanda Gkongoro Nyrautzi
29 July ’08 (~36 hrs)

27 July '08 roast of Rwanda Gkongogo Nyarusiza

Cupping Notes:
Cups bright, a bit tight but not as green as I had assumed based on the times.

Roasting Notes:
Nope. It was clear from the times that this wasn’t going to cup stellar… Actually, since I’m judging the progress almost purely visually in the early stages of the roast, I knew I was flying through it when the end of the warming/drying phase was showing at around 2:20. It was already too late by then, but might as well finish it out.
It was the first roast after the warmup, and the first couple do tend to race too fast – and it didn’t help that I was dumping in only 144g (all that I had left). In hindsight, shouldda sent the El Salvador through first and saved this for last. Though not sure that would have been what would have helped.
So, though first crack began at 7:09, started rolling 25s later, it cupped pretty green.
Not a whole lot else to say. It wasn’t particurally thin, but there wasn’t any development to the flavors, and this should have been a nicely nutty, balanced coffee.

Bolivia San Igacio (2007 CoE 2nd place)
Roasted 27 July, 2008

27 July '08 Roast of Bolivia San Igacio (CoE)

Cupping Notes:
28 July ’08 (~12 hrs)
This is a Spring/Summer coffee for certain… Fresh, clean aromatics – flowery.
Sweetcream sweetness like Crème fraîche. Light chocolate, light nuttyness – a bit peanut with some few cashews thrown in for better creaminess.
Light tending towards medium body.
I just can’t get over how, um pervasive the sweetness in this coffee is. It brings back to memory a sample of a coffee from the Galapagos sent to me about 4 years ago that blew me away with how mellow and sweet it was. I wasn’t able to purchase it only because of the cost, but shit did I want to. This Bolivia did the same thing – so mellow, so sweet in an unassuming way. Like it was so easy for this coffee to be this good, it didn’t have to prove it. It did by just showing up.

Roast Notes:
Well, of any to get right, or at least not screw up, this would be it. The times seemed right on. Breaing open a few beans and checking how evenly their color was compared to the outer surface, I am very happy with where this turned out.
I could probably cut of the roast ever so slightly sooner and get a bit more pronounced fruit, which was here more than any other roast of this coffee yet, but I wanted more of it forward. Though I don’t want to lose that sweetness. Had I the samples, this is where it would be excellent to try roasting again with identical progression up to 1rst crack and dump at the same end temp, but with stretch the time between 1rst crack and dump temp by about, say 15-20 sec. Gets me wondering about what, exactly would happen. Would the fruit hold together and it increase in overall sweetness? or would it dull, and begin turning to caramel? I suspect the latter, but not totally sure.
This is an experiment waiting to happen…

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1. Not the best roast…
2. Bolivia San Ignacio, iced. sumptuous
3. Interesting flavor notes

Roast 2 has more vibrancy and a bit more body. In comparison, the longer development (in roast 1) after 1c muted it’s fruit and floral notes, and slightly muddies the body tones. Not that it’s awful, just not as good.

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3. three samples & roasting notes

Beautiful, clean, light and floral sweetness. Grapefruit like undercurrent helps round out structure – especially in the mid range temperatures as the cup cools. It shows a lighter body than most other Brazils – even compared to the more citrusy, nutty sul de Minas region or certain Central American coffees – this tends toward the light side. But don’t take this for thin. It has depth and structure.

Said sample of Brazil Carmo de Minas at a light – city plus – roast in order to preserve the delicateness of the yellow bourbon varietal. You can see that the surface color is still mottled as it hasn’t progressed far enough past first crack to even the surface out… Not a bad thing at this stage of roast. The interior is very even and consistent with the surface color.. and by the way, this is the first roast that I am satisfied with since hooking up the Pinhalense…

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