It's supposed to be fall here in the Midwest, but the weather is still feeling decidedly summery. We blazed through September with only a few days under 65°, and a calendar full of big events kept us busy in the heat. Last month, we hosted our roasting class and a massive barista education event, recorded five new roasting videos for YouTube, made major strides in our in-house fabrication facility, and cupped 46 coffees.
Here are a few highlights from the cupping table.
Coffees from Sequoia Colombian Coffee Growers & Exporters
We started the month strong with a big table of samples from new-to-us importers and exporters. We are always open to new partnerships, and we've found that the best way to get to know a potential new partner is to cup a wide range of samples from their offerings list. In this session, we tasted nine coffees from the team at Sequoias Colombian Coffee.
Highlights from the group included a Pink Bourbon that tasted like key lime and peach juice and a Caturra "washed lychee" offering with notes of cardamom, pink candies, and holiday spices. Several of the coffees were co-ferments that landed just outside of our collective comfort zone, like a cherry co-fermented Castillo that was sweet and medicinal (think cough syrup) and a coconut co-ferment that was, simply put, too much coconut.
In the world of coffee innovations and advancements in processing, fermentation, and infusion are introducing an array of bold, new flavors. While these coffees aren't for everyone, it's important to us to learn about these new styles of coffee so we can answer questions about how they taste and how they roast. If you're in a position to receive green samples and do your own evaluation, there's a lot to learn from these producers, and we encourage you to dive in.
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Chelchele G1, Natural
In a video we just shared on YouTube, we tested our new RoastPATH tool, Path Intelligence, and I challenged Bryant to follow the generated roast curves from the software using unknown greens. For the first video, we went with something slightly more familiar, selecting a natural processed Ethiopia from the Yirgacheffe region. Coffees like this are classically sweet, fruit-forward, and jammy. We expected berry and milk chocolate flavors, and we chose a lighter drop temperature to highlight origin and processing.
Bryant used knowledge from previous roasts on this machine to help him decide an initial charge temperature and a starting point for his power setting. Despite some initial challenges with the roast moving quickly, he was able to steer the roaster to within 3° and 13 seconds of the goal, which is just within our acceptable variance for profile
Guatemala Finca La Bolsa, Black Honey
StoneX Specialty Coffee Importers were one of many amazing sponsors of the Level Up event we hosted last weekend. Level Up is a 2.5-day immersive educational and networking retreat for baristas. We were excited to host the 80 attendees and 25+ instructors and volunteers, and we also led a class on Day 1 about coffee roasting.
For the class, StoneX generously provided 60kg of Guatemala Finca La Bolsa Black Honey, which we roasted during the demonstration and bagged up as a take-home for everyone that attended the event. We profiled the coffee two different ways, roasting it to different finish temperatures in the same overall time.
Profile #1, which finished at 386° on the MCR-6, was citrusy and bright with brown sugar sweetness and notes of fresh fruit. Profile #2 went to 400°, and the extra heat during the development phase brought out more red fruit flavors like strawberry and cherry, as well as a rich spice note like a craft-made root beer. The body was heavier and the finish was more lingering than profile #1, which felt tea-like and very clean. Both were great roasts that only highlighted what was an inherently great green coffee.
Hibernate: Sneak Peek
Every year, we release two curated blends for the winter and holiday season. Hibernate is the blend built for darker roast profiles; it's meant to be cozy, comforting, and rich. Last month we tasted the very first iterations of Hibernate, created with two coffees that will remain a secret at the time of this blog post.
The final roast profile is still in development, but our early tastings of the blend displayed some of the classic flavors we love in Hibernate. Dark chocolate and earthy fragrances gave way to notes of pine, maple, black cherry, and caramel. It's still in the high 80s here in Minneapolis, with a chance to hit 91° this weekend, but the first sips of this blend had us counting down the days till December. We're so excited to share this coffee with you in just a few weeks.
