Daniel of Arabica
brew, drink, repeat
Ecco’s Brazil Santa Terezinha
What I expected from Ecco’s Brazil Santa Terezinha was what I have been led to expect from all of Ecco’s coffees — a complex, multi-layered cup of liquid elegance. What I got at first, though, was a simple, solid cup of coffee. I wasn’t dissapointed but I wasn’t 
wowed either.
When I picked up the Terezinha from the fine and talented folks at Modern Coffee in Oakland, CA they mentioned that what stood out most from their experience with it was the unsolicited and uniform praise heaped on it by their customers. Now, It is normally simply the nature of the café business that the majority of one’s customers are not likely to go out of their way to let you know how much they enjoyed their cup of coffee. There is a vastly greater chance of you hearing what’s wrong with the cup — call me a cynic — but many of Modern’s customers were, indeed, going out of their way to let them know they thought the Terezinha was an excellent cup of coffee. I was intrigued. I brought a bag home.
Ecco has a reputation — here at “the lab” and elsewhere. Elegance. Refinement. Sophistication. These are just some of the words that come to mind when I think of the coffees I have had from Ecco. We’re talking Mercedes-Benz, Rolls-Royce, maybe Cadillac. That’s the expectation set by past experience with Ecco. Ecco is refined. Ecco is sophisticated.
What Ecco is not, is simple. Here, though, is a cup that just says “drink me every day, I’m uncomplicated” It’s easy to enjoy — mellow and sweet with just a touch of tartness. Simple. Solid. Just a nice cup of coffee. For the coffee snob — in which group I proudly claim membership — there isn’t much there in the cup.
There’s plenty up front. The whole beans smell sweet and like a loaf of yeasty Italian bread. In the perfume of the grinds there’s a sharpness, some sour notes (in a good way). I got concord grape and meyer lemon Add to all that, marzipan (from the back of the spoon, after breaking the crust in the press-pot). In the cup, though, it all changes dramatically. in the cup the Terezinha is just … well … a simple nice coffee … at least at first …
It’s only when it cools that the Tererzinha really comes alive. Now, this is the case with almost all coffees, that piping hot, you are not going to get all that a particular coffee has to offer. You have to let it cool a bit before the fullness of flavor (if, in fact it is there, of course) comes to the fore. So it wasn’t entirely unexpected that this coffee would open up a bit given a chance to cool off. It’s just that not only did the Terezinha require a greater amount of temperature loss before the complexity that was evidenced before and during brewing returned but that the change was so dramatic. Back, was the meyer lemon, the sweetness (mellow and round in the cup). Added to that was a hint of vanilla. Harder to coax out are the oolong flavors (that nice floral-fruit aroma). I had to swirl the mug a bit.
So, patience, then. It will be rewarded. What, at first blush, is a simple cup will come alive and that trademark Ecco elegance and refinement will finally make itself known.
Just the facts
Coffee: Ecco Café’s Organic Brazil Auction Lot Santa Terezinha
Brewing method: Press-pot
Source: Modern Coffee, Oakland, CA
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. [↩]
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