The shortest month of the year held up to its reputation and flew by in the blink of an eye. Before I could put down my cupping spoon, February was over and so was the first week of March. Last month, we tasted so many new and exciting coffees that I couldn't let them all go by undocumented, so please excuse this very belated Notes from the Cupping Table summary.
We tasted 46 coffees last month from every corner of the globe. New-to-us regions, roasters, and processing methods hit the table with exciting tasting notes and long calibration conversations. Here are a few highlights from the month:
Coffees from Zest Coffee Roasters
The Specialty Coffee scene in Australia is well-known for being on the cutting edge of quality, experimentation, and hospitality. Cafe culture in Australia's biggest cities, specifically Melbourne, has set the bar high for coffee service and guest experience. They've also outdone cafes in the US on food programs by a long shot with restaurant-quality menus and full table service.
We had a few friends from Zest Coffee Roasters swing by on their visit to the US last month to check out our new headquarters and share some coffee. We tasted their flagship blends alongside the single-origin components that go into them. It's always fun to taste coffees with members of a team who develop and market them, allowing us to gain extra insight into their goals for each profile. Their Director of Coffee, Roy Greenfield, described three of their blends as varying styles of chocolates ranging from white to milk chocolate, to dark. This made perfect sense as we rotated around the table.
Libertado, the "white chocolate" style coffee, had fruity notes of raspberry, hazelnut, and pomegranate juice, and a delicate balance of acidity and sweetness. Corcovado, one of their popular espresso blends that they describe as more of a milk chocolate flavor, was full of candied citrus, nougat, and brown butter chocolate chip cookies. Their dark chocolate style blend is Blackbird, which tasted like an expensive trail mix (the bougie kind with dark chocolate pieces and whole cashews), toasted nut butter, and rich caramel.
Zest provides extensive extraction parameters for their coffees, and they even specify different brewing recipes for straight espressos vs. milk beverages. It was a treat to taste these coffees and chat with them about their approach to roasting and blending.
Leaderboard Coffee Game
Leaderboard is a coffee-tasting and identification game that just wrapped up its 17th season. Players receive a box of 10 samples of unlabeled coffee, an answer sheet, and a package of Third Wave Water for brewing. To play, you taste the coffees and try to guess the correct answer for each coffee's origin, processing method, varietal, elevation, and caffeine content (no, low, or regular).
We plan to share a longer blog post about playing Leaderboard and how we worked to identify the 10 samples, but since the answers are still being released (only 7 coffees have been revealed as of the time of this post), we want to wait and see what our final score is before writing our summary. The main takeaway is this: the game is fun and super challenging, even for three coffee pros with a combined 40 years of experience in the industry.
A few favorites of the set were Coffee 01, which we correctly identified as a decaf Colombia but crucially missed that it was a washed passionfruit co-ferment. The flavor notes of dried fruit, apricot jam, and raspberries were red herrings on that processing method. Coffee 03 was a redemption for us, we scored 100% on the identification of the washed Pacamara from El Salvador which was nutty and clean with notes of Oolong tea and sweet almonds. The final coffee will be revealed on March 10; look for our longer post on Leaderboard after that date!
Dark Roasted Guatemala Huehuetenango and Mexico CESMACH
We shared details about this Mexico Chiapas coffee in our January Cupping Recap, and as it made its way to our Toll Roasting Menu, we've had the chance to get more familiar with it at different roast levels. During a cupping in February, we tasted a dark roast of the Mexico next to a dark roast of the washed Guatemala Huehuetenango Waykan.
This cupping was a great example of the differences you can experience in dark roasts, and how expanding your vocabulary for coffees roasted past second crack is an important practice. Many roasters fall into the trap of thinking that all dark coffee is the same: smoky, ashy, and bitter, but we found two distinct and enjoyable cups in this comparison.
The dark Guatemala still had hints of red fruits at the dark level, along with rich bakers' chocolate and drinking cocoa and a velvety body. The dark Mexico went in a more spicy direction, it tasted like a rich oak, clove, and a fancy cologne with dense, complex flavors and aromas. These are two dark roasts for two different types of coffee drinkers, and having them both on our menu feels like a nice way to offer variety even at the darkest level.
Mango Co-Ferment and more from Yellow Rooster
At the end of last month's cupping blog, we discussed samples that we tasted from boutique importer Yellow Rooster. That initial cupping was meant to help us get to know their general offerings list and acquaint ourselves with the types of coffees they carry. This month, we did a more focused tasting with more samples from Yellow Rooster to choose a unique coffee for one of our Coffee Fest Workshops, titled "Roasting Rare, Unusual, and Challenging Coffees". The class aims to help roasters understand how to approach new and different coffees at the roaster and how to market those offerings to customers.
On the table, the first cup was a Sidra varietal from Colombia. The dry fragrance smelled like candied figs and mulled wine, and the cup was intensely sweet with notes of cinnamon candies, orange, and cardamom. It was a unique coffee to say the least - more like a chai than a coffee, and one we discussed at length.
There were several co-ferments in the set, but the one we ultimately selected for our class was a mango co-ferment from Colombia. This coffee, which attendees will have the chance to taste with us during Coffee Fest New York, was a big bomb of fruity, candy-like flavors. Peach and watermelon in the aroma, with citrus and (of course) mango notes in the flavor and aftertaste. Despite the wild fruit sweetness, we found the cup balanced and drinkable, and we're excited to share this coffee with friends at the show while we talk about how to roast similar greens and highlight what makes them special.
