Daniel of Arabica
brew, drink, repeat
Shine, Kenya, shine
Kenyan coffee is under-appreciated. Or at least under-represented. Ethiopia is the darling of African coffees these days, to wit, the crazy-quilt-like ubiquity of “Wondos” and “Misty Valleys”. Look on the shelves – literal or virtual – of your favorite “coffee 3.0″1 roaster and chances are the African category is going to be dominated by one Ethiopian after another. I’m scratching my head on this one. Why is it, I wonder, that Kenyan coffee is so underrepresented?2 It’s certainly not an issue of quality. Kenya produces some of the finest beans on the market and has a highly sophisticated and well developed system for getting its beans out to that market3.
Given this imbalanced situation, it’s nice to see one of Kenya’s quality products get some time in the spotlight for once: Ritual Roasters in San Francisco has but one African coffee on their menu at the moment. And it’s a Kenya. Not only that but, as a part of their “Sweet Tooth” single-origin espresso program, they are offering it up by the shot as well as by the bag.
In the spotlight
The Kenya Karindundu on offer at Ritual was the “mystery coffee” I mentioned was present at the Friday cupping in which m’lady and I participated. At the time, the “mystery” designation was warranted, not by the lack of knowledge of the coffee’s name or place of origin, but by the lack of knowledge of how it was processed and what its growing conditions were. That shortfall has been somewhat cleared up, it seems, as Ritual’s page for the Karindundu illustrates; that this is a coffee grown at high altitudes – 2000m above sea level – and that its refined acidity and “exotic flavors” are a direct result of this4. I, myself – as did m’lady (no coffee slouch is she) – thought that this was one of finer Kenyas we have ever had the pleasure of tasting.
From the notes (in the press pot):
- sweet, syrupy, molasses fragrance
- gingerbread aroma
- dark berry
- “zingy” lemon acidity
- slight floral
- full body
The gingerbread aroma was the most surprising aspect of the cup but this may need a bit of an explanation: I’m not talking about an intense hit of crystallized ginger (although, wow, wouldn’t that have been interesting) but a more general flavor – that dovetails with the molasses – of a dark, sweet bread. The dark berry flavors were reminiscent of ripe Bing cherries.
The flavors are concentrated. That was another trademark of this coffee: intensity. The sweetness of this cup was not of the cloying, candy-like variety but tipped more toward the dark sweetness of molasses and raw sugar. Let’s call it a “mature” sweetness.
The acidity was wonderful. Kenyan coffees are known for their brightness, especially when compared to coffee from Ethiopia. I have tasted Kenyans that, after a few sips, were fatiguing for my tongue. Think sour worm candies – or many Costa Rican coffees, for that matter – and that cotton-mouth feeling you get after too much acid has taken its toll on your tongue. The acidity of the Karindundu, though, was well developed and incredibly enjoyable. Its presence was marked at every sip but was well integrated into the cup. No fatigue here. Lemony too. Yumm5.
Gimmee a “K”!…
It’s nice to see Kenya getting some attention. I am curious why Ethiopia is so dominant on the shelves of many of the 3.0 roasters especially considering Kenya’s reputation for quality but I will take what I can get. It’s wonderful, though, that, at least in the case of Ritual Roaster’s Kenya Karindundu, what I can get is such a unique and enjoyable cup.
Where to get it
The usual suspects:
- In the mission at 1026 Valencia St in San Francisco.
- In the Bayview in Flora Grubb Gardens at 1634 Jerrold Ave in San Francisco.
- In Napa at The Oxbow Public Market.
- Online.
Footnotes
- Quick, somebody get my lawyer on the phone. I smell a trademark. [↩]
- Sounds like a subject in need of further study…and possibly a good idea for another post… [↩]
- Thompson Owen, of Sweet Maria’s, penned a rich and descriptive travelogue of his recent buying trip to Kenya. Combined with their Kenya page they offer a wealth of information about Kenya, its quality and well developed auction system. [↩]
- I imagine more general information about how Kenyan coffees are processed can be found at Sweet Maria’s but my curiosity is piqued about Karindundu’s specific processing [↩]
- Official tasting term [↩]
There’s more than one way to roast a Wondo
Wondo
I considered, in a former post, the contribution of the roaster (the human, not the machine) to the flavor of any particular bean; how, given the same initial green offering, two different people can end up with two very different results. Case in point: this coffee, sourced from the Wondo Cooperative in the Yirga Cheffe region of Ethiopia, specifically two instances of it, offered by two different roasters.
Up until recently, the newest kid in town – Four Barrel Coffee Roasters – was receiving its coffee, fully roasted and ready to brew, from the Pacific Northwest’s “3rd wave” pioneers, out of Portland, OR. – Stumptown Coffee Roasters. While Four Barrel patiently waited for its own fledgling roasting operation to get off the ground, an unparalleled opportunity presented itself. Here, with substantial variety, was a uniquely convenient opportunity to get one’s hands on coffee from a renowned Pacific Northwest coffee roaster without having to book an expensive plane flight or pay for shipping costs. It was an opportunity to expand on and confirm my impressions of Stumptown’s offerings without having to don a waterproof shell and trudge my way through the the wet winter streets of Portland or Seattle (this was, of course, in a time before our Bay Area weather decided to open up the flood gates). Many other people besides myself took advantage of this situation before Four Barrel began – in the very same hand-stamped brown paper bags into which it used to repackage it’s weekly delivery from the Pacific Northwest – to quietly substitute its own roasted beans for those of Stumptown’s.
The ever enigmatic “Man Seeking Coffee” was one of those who took advantage of the opportunity and, with respect to the Wondo – but also, it seems, more generally – had a less than exemplary experience. Brewed by any other method besides espresso, the Stumptown roasted Wondo had a distinct lack of personality. Statements like…
The Wondo is barely interesting brewed as a French Press, pour over drip or syphon
…in addition to…
The coffee is pleasant but not particularly complex and just barely compelling.
…should give you an idea of what he thought.
Stumptown, though, is not the only establishment to obtain green beans from the Wondo cooperative. A look around the web will net you a vast array of different roasters, who have roasted coffee on offer, from the very same producer. One of those is Ritual Roasters of San Francisco.
Roasted by Ritual Roasters, I found it to be a pleasant cup out of the french press. Nose to the bloom, there was a pleasing aroma of concentrated dried fruit. Raisins, mostly. In the cup, there was that familiar Yirgacheffe lemony acidity (especially as the cup cooled) with hints of tobacco, dry dark chocolate, a subtle dark berry, with black tea barely peeking out in the mix – partially in the acidity and partially in the aroma. Dry in the finish when hot, with a medium to heavy body, a mellow, round sweetness remained as the cup cooled. This, certainly, cannot be the same coffee…yet it is.
Two different roasters. Same bean. Two wholly different experiences. It’s just one of the many reasons I never tire of drinking coffee, that such variety of flavor can be found in such seeming uniformity. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my Wondo is getting cold.
Twelve Barrels
Four Barrel’s né Stumptown’s Panama Duncan (on flickr)
What I’m Drinking Now: The Four Barrel Memory Test Edition
I have three bags of beans awaiting review. Backed up, their flavors and aromas slowly fading from my palette, they await their turn in the spotlight here at danmarkham.net. in this post, I intend to take care of them all at one fell swoop. My other life has been calling, lately, so It’s been some time since I bought, let alone sampled, any of these coffees (I have since moved on to others and I hope to give my current store of beans their due sooner rather than later). You, dear reader, are going to have to have some faith in my taste memory — and, to be honest, so am I — especially for the first bag, less so for the other two. But let’s see what we can do.
It’s a bit of a Four Barrel love affair here, I admit, but it’s also a love of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, in Portland, OR and an appreciation of the fact that Four Barrel’s carrying Stumptown’s beans, for the time being, affords anyone, with access to the new kid on the Mission café block, an outstanding oppurtunity to sample an incrediblly wide variety of Stumptown’s coffee, sans shipping charges or the cost of a plane ticket with the destination PDX. I look forward to the day I am able to sample something that comes directly from the back of the house at Four Barrel but, until then, easy access to the products of a seminal west coast roaster is no bad thing.
So, here we go, in descending chronological order …
Guatamela, Finca El Inherto, Bourbon Varietal
Like I said above, this coffee is going to take a bit more heavy lifting, on my brain’s part, to remember anything specific — especially since I see no reference to it on Stumptown’s site any longer — but the general gist of it is this: this is a nice, solid coffee. It has a bit of the dusty spiciness that I remember getting in other Guatamalans with good sweetness and a mellow dose of acidity. It’s not a coffee that is going to hit you over the head with any type of unusually bold flavor but it’s not going to throw you any curve balls either so I suppose it’s all in the way you look at it.
Panama Duncan
Our next contestant hails from the home of the great Panama Canal, a country known as … well … Panama. I’ve reviewed a Panama before — Ritual’s Panama Boquete, Finca Berlina – and, whatta ya know, there is a bit of the same savory character found in that coffee, right here. This time, though, it was not as pronounced. The acidity was, let’s see, if memory serves, more bright than the guatemala mentioned above, with a more medium bodied feel.
Ethiopia Mordecafe
I intended to pick up a bag of Colombian. I wanted to compare and contrast it with the Guatamala, the memory of which, at the time, was definitely fresher. No luck, though, as it’s shelf was bare on the day I entered. Instead, I was drawn to this particular African coffee for the lack, in it’s description, of any overarching berry flavors. I love a nice, berry sweet Ethiopian as much as the next brown-blooded coffee drinker but it seems, these days, that is all you get: a dry-processed Ethiopian bursting with berries. Wonderful, but I thought it was time to try something different (ironic, that an Ethiopian without berry flavors is what could be considered different, these days).
There was a lot of talk, on the description, of sugar and candied lemon peel that made it sound as if there was going to be a veritable symphony of sweet and citrus but I thought it was all a bit more subdued than that. The flavor that was put forth on the description that did, in fact, reveal itself to me, was that of Oolong tea. This was, probably, the most unique aspect of this coffee, quite possibly making it the most unique of the three in this review and elevating it to something quite unusual with respect to the entire portfolio of beans that I’ve tried. Very nice and, as stated above, a welcome change of pace from the surfeit of Ethiopian berry-bombs out there today.
Dat’s Dat
So, there you go. Three coffees in one post. It’s a precedent setting event here. There are, of course, many more offerings to be had. At some point I hope to have given them all a little bit of my time.
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