Daniel of Arabica
brew, drink, repeat
Posts Tagged ‘sweet’
Swoon
[...] so freakin complex it will make you swoon
Indeed. “[...] so freakin complex”, in fact that this single-origin coffee could have easily passed for a blend in a blind tasting. I picked up the bag of Reserva from my local Whole Foods after a long stint of Africans and Indonesians. I couldn’t have picked a better return to the continent.
The notes, such as they are:
- butter and sweet (butterscotch)
- rich
- integrated flavors
- rasberry
The paucity of notes should not throw up any red flags for you but, in fact, stands in direct opposition to the sheer amount of flavors present in a cup of the Reserva. The note on “integrated flavors”? My feeble attempt at reflecting the numerous and varied flavors that that made up the cup of this elegant, rich and complex coffee.
As a challenge, I decided to refrain from looking at Barefoot Coffee’s tasting notes before I created some of my own. And what a challenge it was. So nuanced, so well balanced, so well integrated, were the flavors that I had a difficult time connecting everything my palette was encountering to an appropriate volume of words such that I thought I was doing the Reserva justice – Maybe it’s time for some more education – and so, the list above. On the other hand, I didn’t have a difficult time enjoying it.
I prepared the Reserva both in the press-pot and the Chemex. The press-pot brought out the sweetness (butterscotch), while the Chemex highlighted just how balanced this coffee is. I can’t recommend one prep over the other, it shines either way.
Stale
I’ve had a bag of Ritual Roaster’s Finca Matalapa La Cidra, El Salvador sitting in my cupboard, nearly empty, for almost a month now. And no notes. Nothing. Search as I might, I can’t find a single tasting note I’ve made on this coffee. The roast date on this bag is September 10th. 
Man! Falling down on the job, that’s what this is.
Making lemonade
But I’ll take this as somewhat of an experiment, something to pique my interest, lemons…into lemonade: how does this coffee taste when it is truly, beyond all debate, past its prime? Do some coffees hold up well even long after they are deemed, by common practice, stale?
In my experience there has been at least one coffee that, indeed, has held up well against time and common practice: Ritual’s Finca Moreno, Santa Barbara, Honduras that I wrote about last December continued to brew a fine cup even two weeks past its roast date (and here’s an interesting turn of events: I wrote about two coffees in that post and the other was…drum roll, please….Ritual Roaster’s Finca Matalapa, El Salvador, the CoE winning instance of it…talk about revisiting an old friend).
This is, of course, a decidedly unscientific exercise, at least in terms of the methods used in this post, but I am not going to let that stop me. I am going to compare my notes about this aging beauty against Ritual’s notes on the same coffee. I brewed the old La Cidra in a press-pot. I made the judgement that it would do the best job of coaxing out any off-flavors if there were any to be had.
The test
Lets take a gander at the bag and the flavors claimed to reside within: “pineapple, lime candy, maple”, is what the bag states. The description on Ritual’s website is similar: “Lively and sweet, with flavors of ripe pineapple, lime candy, and a subtle maple finish”.
So, what did I find in the “stale” bag? Honestly, nothing but good things: a woody fragrance in the grinds and an unami-like savory character (“tang and saltiness like miso soup”, is what I wrote), a sweetness (tamarind and molasses), a thick viscous body and a pleasant lime acidity in the cup.
Even taking into account the differences in flavor perception between two (or more) different taste buds, I think the the La Cidra held up respectably well to the ravages of time. The pineapple and maple turned into and/or was perceived as something more concentrated and the lime acidity was still there, possibly in a less pronounced form but still pleasantly present in the cup. Impressive.
Old coffee
This has me thinking that I need to be more rigorous about this, that it would be interesting to re-create this using my own tasting notes and that this has the makings of a new series of posts examining the degree to which any number of coffees’ flavor profiles are changed by time.
“Old coffee”. Yeah. I like it…
Brazilian Blue
No, I’m not sad. Not at all. How could I be with a coffee like this in my pot every morning? It’s Ritual Roasters’ Daterra Sweet Blue.
The fragrance of the freshly ground coffee? Peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches (yeah, I said PB&J).
I brewed the Daterra two ways: press-pot and Chemex.
In the Chemex, as always the aroma during the pour-over is especially intense. More intense than in any other preparation. Aromas during the poor in the Chemex were of sassafrass (yeah, I said sassafrass). In the cup it was sweet and smooth but a little boring. In the press-pot, on the other hand, things became a little more interesting.
The press-pot brought a lot more complexity to the table. Cranberry. Cola. Cherry. Hazelnut. Cardamom. Thick, round and sweet with a still light but lively acidity. Now, that’s better.
I can’t find this coffee on Ritual’s website but the next time you find yourself in the Mission, take a gander at the shelves. Maybe you’ll get lucky.
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