Sweet Maria's Small Batch, Craft-Roasted Coffee Selections
A new direction for our roasted coffee offerings! In the time we have offered roasted coffee, our weekly selection became quite popular. The only problem was that it became too popular! Our primary focus is to offer green coffee and home roasters. With our subscription service in particular, we were becoming a regular roasted coffee source. We love roasting, but we want to do this in our own way, for each roast session to highlight unique differences in our greater green coffee offerings.
We are now offering "coffee pairings": one pound each of two coffees chosen to highlight differences in origin, processing, or roast; to provide our customers the ability to study the flavor profiles of two coffees. This sort of comparison is what we do all the time. Tom does this formally
when he cups a number of different coffee lots at the cupping table. In the warehouse we make a different coffee each time we brew a pot. Such a practice helps us focus on the flavor of the cup, to appreciate each coffee's uniqueness.
We are roasting less frequently now, roughly every two weeks, and picking two "regular"coffees each time. No decaf. No espresso blends. (We might offer single origin darker roasts for dual use as brewed coffee and espresso in the future). But in general, it's regular coffee to brew up however you choose. You may want to brew them and taste them side by side, or alternate making one coffee and then the next. Taste the coffees hot, warm and cold. Taste them the same time everyday or different times, and try to notice if they seem the same. (I tend to taste coffee better in the morning, when I am less distracted).
(Update: If you're interested specifically in roasted coffee for espresso, see our Roasted Espresso Page.)
If
you roast your own, you might want to cup your roasts versus those done
on the gas-fired German Probat roaster, and compare the "degree
of roast"
we have chosen for the specific coffees to your own. If you don't roast
at home, well ... here's the next best thing!
We have a new Sweet
Maria's Roasted Coffee Weblog where we discuss the why and
how of each week's selection ... and you can make comments too. It serves as an archive for previous roast sessions, so you can go back to review our comments, versus your findings.
Next Roast Date?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The Pairing?
Staff Favorites
Why?
This is a hard decision, some of the incredibly helpful office staff here at Sweet Maria's favor more subtle, clean flavors like the mild Central American coffees we offer, but I'd say the majority of our amazingly efficient warehouse staff goes for the wilder, rustic coffees of Indonesia and Africa. So for this week's pairing we are roasting Rwanda Gkongoro Nyarusiza and Sumatra Blue Batak Tarbarita Peaberry. The Tarbarita peaberry is consistently one of our top selling coffees so I know a lot of you home roasters out there love it too, and this lot has spicy and sweet accents and is great roasted a bit on the darker side (for us anyway!). The Rwanda is a good compromise for the members of the staff that like milder coffees as it is not over-the-top like a lot of other East African coffees. Again, this coffee excels at darker roast levels so expect a pairing roasted to Full City, maybe even a snap or two of second crack (whaaaa?!). 'Tis true, some of us here at Sweet Maria's actually do like some roast taste in our coffee, just not too much!
This coffee pairing is $30, and includes one pound each of the two coffees listed above (2 Lbs. total) and the price of Priority Mail shipping is included as well! (Please be sure that the USPS can deliver to the address you give us.)
$30.00 Order by 4 pm on Tuesday (the roasting date) to have
the coffee roasted and shipped Wednesday (the next morning!) Prices include 2#s of coffee and shipping. Choose "Free Shipping $0.00" when you check out.
If you want other items, PLEASE place a separate order for just the roasted coffee.
If you can pick the order up at our warehouse - we do now offer the roasted coffee pairings at a discounted rate $24.00
Our Menu of Upcoming Roast Sessions:
March 2, 2010: DIY Melange
Rwanda Gkongoro Nyarusiza
This lot is from a cooperative washing station (a wet mill for coffee processing) in the region of Gikongoro, Nyarusiza, near Butare. It's part of the greater Bufcafe (Bufcoffee) coop ... however you put it, a clumsy name, But coops aren't about fancy romantic names, and Bufcafe had several top spots in the first-ever Rwanda Cup of Excellence this past year. Their coffees were consistently excellent, and I remember them well because I was there as a judge! And just to see the director of Bufcafe, a shy petite lady they call Epiphane, thunder down the aisle to claim the awards at the podium, it was worth the airfare to Africa! She is a force. This area, in southwestern Rwanda not far from Burundi, has some of the best coffee farming areas, featuring older types of the traditional Bourbon varietal. With a range of 1300 to 1600 meters, this lot of high grown Bourbon has a compact physical density that performs well in a variety of roast conditions, air roast or drum roast. The coffee is wet processed and dried immediately on raised beds in the African style, which promotes even, rapid drying (more-so than patio drying in many cases) because the air flows around the wet parchment coffee from above and below. It's ideal for this climate, and allows the coffee to be culled while it dries to remove defects. This is a classic Rwanda cup. The dry fragrance has a balanced sweetness, sweet bread and cinnamon, with spice tea dark aromas. Wet aromatics have rose-like floral notes, and caramelized cane sugar sweetness. This cup has lots of sweet mulling spices to it; dried orange peel, cinnamon bark, clove, allspice. There is sweet citrus in the lighter roasts, lemon oil, a bittersweet tea finish. It's very balanced; bittersweet roasty coffee flavors in proportion to fruit and aromatic grace notes. The body is not heavy, and yet it has a creamy texture to it, and there is a buttery quality that lingers into the finish. All of this adds up to a character much more restrained than a bright, flashy Kenya coffee, that has enough depth to discover new flavors with each brewing. Rose floral notes emerge as the cup cools. Keep tasting it, and you will find more to like in this lot... at least that is my experience. Contrary to other East Africa coffees, I think the Rwanda benefits from a little more roast, City+ to Full City, because my lightest City roast samples had a slight grainy note and astringency in the finish.
Compare to:Graceful East African brightness and bittersweets. Clean and dynamic cup. This coffee is very balanced, and plays well to the cupping form, a "competition coffee." It might make the numbers seem high when considering the overall cup and the total score, hence the low cuppers correction.
This is a peaberry preparation of the Blue Batak Lintong-area coffee. Lintong coffees are from Sumatra, the island that is politically and geographically part of Indonesia. Lintong Nihota is the town that has become synonymous with the entire southern part of Lake Toba area. Lake Toba defines the landscape of the area, the largest volcanic crater lake in the world, and the result of the largest volcanic event on earth in the last 25 million years! It is huge, and the coffees from the north and eastern shores are quite different from the Lintong coffees. Lintong coffees are farmed by the Batak peoples that are the indigenous tribe that works the coffee in this area. We offer the top grade, specially- prepared Lintong coffees as Blue Batak in honor of the Toba Batak people. I find Sumatras like this more complex in the lighter roasts than in the usual darker roasts they receive. The main reason is that many commercial roasters use color and surface texture as indicators of roast level. The peaberry has a different roast dynamic, and seems to be a more dense bean that the flats. (Sumatra is known as a fairly "soft" bean, overall). The Tarbarita has a complex aroma, with rustic sweetness, chocolate, honey-hickory, and savory herbal notes. There's sweet sarsaparilla and root beer scents in the wet aroma, caramel and butterscotch, darker malty scents, and pungent spice. My lightest roast was a bit too light (City, just through first crack and stopped) and it has a tomato stem smell - so make sure you allow the roast to progress a bit beyond City (unless you love tomato in your coffee)! At City+ the sweetness reminds me of chicory root and molasses, laced with clove and cinnamon. The body is lighter that the non-peaberry Blue Batak lot, but still quite syrupy and substantial. And the cup a bit brighter and more lively than most Sumatras I cup here. There's a dark malty note, as well as caramelized sugars and butterscotch with a rustic overlay. The long finish has a nice cinnamon-laced tea note that I find very pleasing, and hints of aromatic wood, cedar and cinnamon bark, come through.
This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate
pricing transparency program.
A new direction for our roasted coffee offerings! In the time we have offered roasted coffee, our weekly selection became quite popular. The only problem was that it became too popular! Our primary focus is to offer green coffee and home roasters. With our subscription service in particular, we were becoming a regular roasted coffee source. We love roasting, but we want to do this in our own way, for each roast session to highlight unique differences in our greater green coffee offerings.
