Verve’s Burundi Bwayi
What if a Yirg & a Kenya ...?
I made a pilgrimage of sorts this week to Santa Cruz, CA for an opportunity to soak in the aura of a roaster who’s coffee I have been enjoying locally for some time now. I’ll leave my experience at their café for another post – that’s what the Café tramp series of posts are for – but Verve coffee roasters’ beans have left me impressed.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area there are three cafés – each of which I have great respect for – that feature the coffees of Verve: Modern Coffee in Oakland, Sightglass in San Francisco and farm:table, also in San Francisco.
At each location the espresso blends, the single-origins are all just … well … well, hell, they’re just scrumptious. Flavor, flavor, flavor. Packed with it. Impressed.
They’ve all been interesting as well. “Interesting?”, you say? “What on earth are you talking about?”. I’m talking about individuality in flavor. Each Verve coffee I have had carries some unique flavor profile. Walnuts in one, sweet cane in something else, leather, cocoa and cardamom in another. So far, everything I’ve tasted from Verve has it.
But what about the Burundi ?..
Verve’s Burundi Bwayi – The short version …
if a Yirgacheffe and a Kenyan coffee had a love-child, well, this – Verve’s Burundi Bwayi – is what it would taste like.
… and a little bit longer one
On one hand, like a fine Yirgacheffe from Ethiopia, Verve’s Burundi Bwayi has aromas of delicate oolong tea and fragrant flowers. On the other, there are traces of Kenya’s concentrated, molasses-like sugars and dark berry-like sweetness.
Where the Burundi Bwayi distinguishes itself, where it makes itself unique – like any good child should – is in it’s creamy mouthfeel, the slightly sweeter fruit-punch-like berry flavors that also make themselves known and it’s distinctively – for an African coffee – woody, earthy palate (almost Sumatra-like) that carries over into the long, dry finish. Top it all off with a sharp but pleasant, sort-of tart apple-like acidity and you’ve got another unique entry in the Verve lineup.
A little more info … for the truly geeky
Of interest to me was the fact that this was a wet processed African coffee. Wet processed – as opposed to dry processed – coffees are known for their clean, un-muddied flavors and crisp acidity. The tart-apple-like acidity of the Bwayi was not of particular surprise then. What was surprising was the almost Sumatra-like woody, earthy component.
If you look at the photo above (click it to make it larger) you’ll notice three terms at the very bottom of the bag: Bourbon, Jackson, Mibitzi. I was already aware that Bourbon referred to a particular coffea arabica variety. Bourbon is a popular and highly productive variety of coffea arabica that was planted by the French on the island of Bourbon (now Réunion) around 1708, mutated and was then planted throughout Brazil in the late 1800s (Wikipedia). Jackson and Mibitzi I was not familiar with. A little research revealed that both Jackson and Mibitzi are both Bourbon cultivars native to Rwanda and Burundi. Now you know.
Just the facts
Who: Verve Coffee Roasters
What: Burundi Bwayi Wet Process
When: Roasted on January 7th, 2010
Where: Santa Cruz, CA
Why: I ♥ coffee
How: Chemex
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
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.
Quickly…an Indonesian…
Flying Goat’s Dolok Sanggul as procured from Local 123.
Just the raw, mostly, unedited notes from various rounds of tasting the Dolok Sanggul…
Bright, vegetal, peppers, earth.
Bright like the sidikalang
Brighter than most indos.
Sauteéd onions, cran-apple acidity,
Tamarind, toast and cinnamon
And vanilla?
And wood.
Maybe I’m simply more aware of unami
but here it is again,
The beans themselves smell like a spicy Indian meal.
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.
beri berry
It’s been some time since I grabbed a bag of Ritual beans but I was overdoing it a bit for awhile, there, and Daniel of Arabica was starting to look more like Daniel de la Ritual. Bag after bag after bag here in “The Lab”. I was a starting to get into a rut. A good rut, to be sure. it’s not that I wasn’t enjoying myself — one could appease all of their coffee yearnings solely with the variety of quality beans Ritual has on offer — but I had to draw the line. Don’t want to be accused of favoritism. I have a reputation to maintain…I think. But it had been long enough. I figured it was safe to venture back.
beri berry
Off to the Mission, then, to cavort with the hipsters, pick up a few bike ideas and, by the by, drop by Ritual to score a bag of beans. Ritual’s Ndumberi Peaberry from Kenya, say hello “The Lab” here at Daniel of Arabica world headquarters. This bag, also, is a sort of shout out to m’lady, Danielle, who loves a good Kenya. Here ya go, babe.
Back in “The Lab” I have subjected my latest acquisition to the usual battery of tests. Here is what it has to say:
In the Chemex
Molasses. Sharp acidity. Full body. I get the lemon curd from the description (tart, sweet, egg?!) but not the strawberries. I did get some berry quality but I didn’t specifically get strawberry. The sweetness is dark, caramelized and concentrated. It’s on the bright side for a peaberry, especially, but not for a Kenya – similar, in this way, to the Flying Goat Brazilian peaberry I tasted earlier – but the body and sweetness provide a balancing backbone; it’s at once smooth and soft yet bright and citrusy. Like two coffees in one bag or a blend. As it cools the acidity becomes more berry-like and becomes more pronounced but broader and less sharp.
In the press-pot
Dark molasses aroma. If “lemon curd” wasn’t mentioned on the bag, I never would have found it but, again, I can see the point: concentrated, carmelized sugar and candied lemon. The acidity is tingly sharp but not at all unpleasant. Nose in the mug, there is a unique ripe garden tomato aroma paired with a “brothy”, resin-y herb (like rosemary).
And so…
…another fine coffee from the folks at Ritual. I had it as a cold-brew as well but I’ll be damned if I can find my notes on that prep. I’ll tell you it was tasty, that the acidity was out front but not overbearing and that the berry and lemon shone through the sweetness like a warm light welcoming you home. That good? Good. Now, go get yourself some. Tell ‘em I sent ya.
Want it? Get it…
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 peaberry 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:
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 weeks. 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 be. 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-pot
- 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?
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.
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