Daniel of Arabica
brew, drink, repeat
Archive for July 2009
Brazil…via Santa Rosa
Santa Rosa, CA is where I was first introduced to good coffee. There’s Susan Koshow’s Centro Espresso (the progenitor of the venerable but long defunct Western Café – Andrew Barnett’s seminal effort in the coffee biz and now with two locations: downtown and up the hill on Stagecoach Road), there’s Mr. Barnett’s subsequent venture into roasting – the highly acclaimed Ecco Café and, finally, there is the 3rd wave local coffee mini-empire that is The Flying Goat. That’s a surprising amount of good coffee for such a small town and one that has an undue, yet tenaciously held, reputation as a sort of Northern California backwater. But it was in this supposed backwater that I was exposed to what good coffee, prepared with care and skill, was all about and where I was made aware of entirely new concepts of how coffee should be and could be treated. It was coffee as an artisanal culinary ingredient, as art and craft. “Revelation” may be a strong word but certainly, it goes some way toward explaining the nature of my experience that first time I took my first sip of a latte produced by the master hand of Andrew Barnett at The Western.
Boa Sorte Peaberry
And, so, when I return every so often to visit friends and family, I make it a point to visit at least one of these joints to reminisce, to get my quality coffee fix and, of course, to pick up a bag of beans. This last trip resulted in “the lab” being graced by the presence of a bag of The Goat’s organic, pulp natural, Boa Sorte Peaberry from Brasil.
I love Brazilian coffees for their nuttiness and smooth, sweet character. That this was a peaberry1 only made me more excited over the possibilities: take a coffee noted for its sweetness and separate out the beans that promise to deliver that sweetness in an even more concentrated form. It sounded very promising. But did it deliver?
Aromas and fragrance
Sticking my nose into the bag, the whole beans gave off aromas of roasted peanuts and hazelnuts as well as a sort of milk chocolate creamy sweet character. Freshly ground, they had an amazingly powerful tang to them, suggesting a prominent acidity. There was a floral element, wet earth, loam, wood and some dried fruit (cherries, cranberries and strawaberries). The most perplexing aroma? Something I tentatively termed “aromatic root”; something like root beer or sassafras.
In the press pot
As expected – this is a peaberry after all – there was a generous amount of sweetness on hand. And it was that soft, round, concentrated sweetness you might expect. Medium to heavy body in the mouth. Richly sweet, not cloying, there were aromas of nuts and wood. There was also that same “aromatic root” component in the cup that I detected earlier, in the fresh grounds.
The acidity was surprisingly direct, both for a natural processed Brazilian as well as for a peaberry. “Melon or grape”, I wrote. It was thin, though. Not sweet and not containing much complexity or character. Probably the most disappointing aspect of the brew, really. It certainly didn’t ruin the experience; the intensity of the other flavors were such that the acidity, while prominent, was but a small portion of the overall flavor profile.
Cold brew
The acidity, though, took its toll on this coffee as a cold-brew. While cold-brewing reduces the harsher aspects of a coffee’s acidity, it doesn’t cancel it out. In fact, I’ve found that, if anything, cold-brewing a coffee accentuates and amplifies the characteristics of a coffee’s acidity. Is it juicy, citrusy? You’ll find those flavors utterly popping in a cold-brew. If you’re not happy with the acidity in a pot of any particular coffee brewed hot, don’t expect it to get any better after twelve hours in the refrigerator.
So, that thinly grape-y, melon-y acidity in Flying Goat’s Boa Sorte made for a less than stellar cold-brew. It wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t great. It had sweetness, a little berry but those flavors couldn’t drown out the coffee’s harsher aspects.
Keep it hot and you’ll have an entirely more pleasant experience.
Where, oh where…
There are only three places to get Flying Goat’s coffee, as far as I know:
- At their Santa Rosa location.
- At their Healdsburg location.
- Online, at their website.
Footnotes
- It seems as if there is more controversy about the value of peaberry coffee than I though there was. Regardless, I find them generally more roundly sweet than other coffees. [↩]
Brazil…via San Jose
I try to get into San Francisco to pick up a new bag of beans as often as I can but, even given how easy the trip is from Oakland, there are still times I cannot find the time to take the BART ride over. Luckily, I have a few other avenues with which I can acquire quality beans – some are personal connections, others are work-related. Still another option I am lucky enough to have at my disposal is the Whole Foods market that exists practically right down the street from my house and their small selection of beans from third-party roasters. The
Whole Foods, Oakland
selection may be a bit small but for a last-resort coffee source I can’t complain too much about the depth of product on offer, even as shallow as it is. Ritual is represented, although I can’t imagine ever choosing to buy their beans from the Whole Foods shelf. Terrible rotation. I have found beans over a month past their roast date on the shelf and it is incredibly difficult to find a bag that is any younger than a couple of weeks1. Sad, really, and not a good representation of the quality product that Ritual produces.
Represent!
Another roaster represented at my local Whole Foods, and one which apparently has a better rotation program, is Barefoot Roasters. I was peripherally aware of Barefoot for some reason (blog mention? Twitter post? hmmm…) so after a fruitless digging session through my Whole Foods’ collection of aging Ritual beans, seeing the name on the shelf was a welcome relief.
Santa Colombia in the cupboard
Barefoot hails from San Jose. Imagine my surprise when I found a specialty coffee roaster hailing from my hometown. Not exactly the town I think of when I consider the various locations associated with the burgeoning coffee v2.0 scene. Seattle? Check. Portland? Check. Los Angeles? Check. New York? Check. San Francisco? Check. San Jose? Uhhhhhh…no. So, then, a diamond in the rough, that’s what Barefoot Roasters seems to be2. I can deal with that. After all, the proof is in the mug.
Proof
And, indeed, the proof is in a mug of Barefoot Roasters coffee. At least in the case of this, the only coffee I have had the opportunity to try as yet – their Brazil Daterra Santa Colombia – which I found to be, if not spectacularly unique, then at least a solid Brasil offering and a coffee I would be neither embarrassed to recommend or hesitant in picking up again should the desire strike me.
What do I mean by “solid”? Well, I have come to expect certain characteristics from the better coffees of Brasil. A certain nuttiness (indeed, sometimes peanut butter). A certain smoothness. Full body. Some sweetness. Maybe some fruit in there as well. Barefoot’s Brazil Daterra Santa Colombia covers all those bases and covers them well. No surprises. From the notes:
In the Chemex
- nuts
- berries (cherry)
- full bodied w/a dry, almost grainy texture (like peanut butter)
- nice vegetal character (green stalk veggies)
In the Press-pot3
- aroma in the cup is sweet and nutty
- tobacco
- still green and vegetal
- hazelnuts
- cumin
- dark sugar
- a bit of sharpness in the acidity showing its age, I think.
Sum it up, Mr. Arabica…
As you can see the stand-out flavors, over and above the usual Brazilian traits, are the vegetal character out of both the press-pot and Chemex preparations and the cumin spice that came exclusively from the press-pot.
So, like I said, solid. Not “oh-my-god” unique but certainly worth picking up should the desire for a good example of what Brasil has to offer should strike you. I’m glad Barefoot is an option for me as a retail offering that I can pick up without resorting to mail-order and I’m, admittedly, just a little proud that my hometown of San Jose is also home to, what has so far proven to be, a quality specialty coffee roaster.
Where?
Footnotes
- Somebody remind me to check in on when the Ritual supply at my local Whole Foods is replenished. I wonder if Mr. Ford has any idea how old their selection of beans are over here [↩]
- Feel free to correct me in the comments section [↩]
- As a qualifier to my experience of the Brazil Daterra Santa Colombia in the press-pot, I feel I must mention that, due to head cold that knocked out my capacity to smell or taste much of anything for some time, by the time I was able to honestly deduce anything from this coffee it was already ten days past the roast date. Full disclosure. [↩]
The land of Gayo
I’d never had the opportunity to taste anything from De La Paz before I picked up their Sumatra Gayo land ”med. roast”. I’d heard of them through other blogs but I had never seen their beans for sale anywhere until I decided to check out The Mission neighborhood’s newest café addition: Haus. Haus is one of the newer quality-focused cafés that seem to be appearing in more and more locations. In lieu of establishing their very own roasting operation – and all that entails – these cafés instead carry beans from one, two or a few highly respected roasters. Ideally, just as in the case of the roast-our-own bunch, the skill level is high and the end products are both delicious and beautiful to behold. Haus, as of this writing, carries beans from both Ritual and De La Paz. I picked up a bag of and headed to “the lab”.
The beans and the grounds
I’ve talked about Sumatra’s appealing aroma in whole bean form before: roasted chiles and tobacco. To that description, In the case of De la Paz’s Sumatra Gayo land, add a hit of berry and a hint of sweet toasted bread. The grounds were another matter entirely. In ground form the Gayo land’s whole bean fragrance blossomed into a complex – and for me, highly evocative – fruity tobacco symphony.
In the press pot
“Lab” time was short on this one and so my notes are limited to a press-pot preparation. This is one of the more simple and direct “Tasting notes” you’ll find here at Daniel of Arabica. To that end, the cup was relatively lively for a Sumatra and managed to retain some of the aroma found in its ground state. Full bodied, the cup also had a sweetness about it that lingered and increased its presence as the cup became cooler and cooler. Nice.
Mysterious
Funny but I can’t find any reference to this coffee on the De La Paz website. I put an email in to the folks at DLP. We’ll see what comes of that. In the mean time, the best place to look for a bag would be to go Haus. Its worth a trip anyway.
Small luxuries
During most of the time that I knew him Duffy, my step-grandfather, was a desert-dwelling, pipe-smoking, gold rush-era style cowboy nomad. Residing either in the desert or on the road in his van, we saw him around two times a year and it was usually because there was a gun show in town1.
The smells I associate with him are predominantly of a, shall we say, unpleasant nature. Big fan of the road, this man. Not as big a fan of the shower. On occasion, during one of his visits, my mother was able to convince him that it was in his best interest to scrub off the grime and odor but for the most part he remains, in my mind, a kind and quiet but soiled and sourly aromatic character. Except for the smell of his pipe tobacco.
Now, I never got into smoking. Lucky I didn’t, too – I’m not good at quitting bad habits – but to this day I love the smell of tobacco. It all started, I believe, with Duffy and his store of pipe tobacco. Maybe I remember the deep, rich, slightly musty but fruity aroma of of his chosen brand because, while the aroma of it matched his own personal one in it’s – dare I say – richness and fecundity, the expeience was the polar opposite in terms of pleasure and aesthetics. It was a small bit of luxury in an otherwise grossly unkempt lifestyle.
It’s said a single smell can bring back a flood of emotions and memories of people, places or events. Recently I had an Indonesian coffee – De La Paz’s Sumatra Gayo land [sic]2 – in “the lab”. The first time I went to brew it, and with the grounds sitting in my grinders’ catch bin I was struck by just how much they smelled like Duffy’s pipe tobacco. It brought me back to when I was a kid, my brother and I surreptitiously peeling the lid off of the can of tobacco so that we could fully take in its intoxicating fragrance. It was such a wonderful sensory experience – I couldn’t wait to share it with my brother – and it reminded me why I love tasting, and therefore smelling, quality coffee and why, for that matter, I find such enjoyment from any other quality food experience. Weather I am swooning over the latest coffee that ends up in “the lab”, reveling in a beautifully crafted pizza at any one of my favorite pizza places3, or enjoying the justly earned rewards of well cooked meal, I love making those connections, firing and building those synapses in the brain that are so intimately connected with memory. I can’t always identify the exact referent for what I am smelling but the richness of the ambiguous flood of memories and emotions that come rolling in makes for an amazingly evocative sensory experience. The elation I feel when I am, indeed, able to make those connections is worth far more than the money I spent on the bag of beans.
Its a small luxury. I’m all about the small luxuries.
Footnotes
- Later in his life, he landed his dream job – and settled down in his own way – as the Sheriff of Calico Ghost Town [↩]
- sic |sik| adverb
used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original, as in a story must hold a child’s interest and “enrich his [ sic ] life.”
In this case, I’m indicating that this is the exact way that “Gayo land” was printed on the bag. [↩]
- those favorites being Pizzaria Delfina in San Francisco and Pizzaria Picco across the bridge in Larkspur [↩]
New game in town
Welcome to Oakland
Farley’s — a café in San Francisco that I honestly have never been to — is opening a new location in my neighborhood (that neighborhood being the Grand Lake/Downtown area of Oakland). Which means, I guess, that I’d better check it out. The San Francisco location was, after all, voted Best of the Bay or something in some year or other by some local rag in addition to getting a stellar recc. from a trusted source.
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