Beans: Guatemala Santa Felisa
Roaster: Beans Tei
Roasting degree: City
Area: Acatenango, Guatemala
Finca Santa Felisa @ Acatenango Volcano Valley
Altitude: 1500-1700m
Varieties: Pache, Typica, Bourbon
Grade: N/A
Processing: Washed,
Rain forest Alliance, Organic, OCIA, NOP, EU, JAS
【Flavor scale】
Mildness: 2
Bitterness: 3
Richness: 3
Aroma: 3
Acidity: 2
Sweetness: 3
※Grade 1 to 5
【Impression】
Medium body, very clean, roasted nuts with jasmine like aroma with a tint of lime, silky smooth texture, elegant and mellow with clean finish, a little bitterness as after taste. Mild and consistent body, caramel like creamy feeling with agave syrup sweetness, green apple acidity, matured sweetness of plums and roasted almonds.
【Note】
Finca Santa Felisa always provides the Guatemalan rich coffee: rich, flavorful, transparent and well-balanced. Flavor relies on somewhat roasting techniques although how flavorful/wonderful green beans are. Guatemalan seems to fit Japanese style roasting, small rot with small-size machine compared with mega size US machines. Probat & Fuji-Loyal are often found, 5kg to 15kg in space-wise, which excel in light to medium roasting. Dark roast, such as Italian roast, may strongly depend on Machine size, and also say low quality beans. Whereas, lighter roasting degree is one of techniques to enhance flavor of High quality beans.
Beans: Sumatra Mandheling Pawani SP
Roaster: Beans Tei
Roasting degree: Full City
Area: Takengon, Aceh,the northern end of Sumatra
Altitude: 1,200m～
Varieties: Original Arabica
Grade: G-1
Processing: Washed
【Flavor scale】
Mildness: 2
Bitterness: 4
Richness: 4
Aroma: 4
Acidity: 1
Sweetness: 3
※Grade 1 to 5
【Impression】
Mild and dark aroma, strong impressionous body, Sweetness with deep tone bitterness, acidity not detected, fruity sweetness to finish. Poerful earthy flavor but not too bitter.
Unlike other mandeling, less powerful and complicated. Symple mild flavor with well balanced sweetness and bitterness.
【Note】
Roaster said this beans is replacement of Biru seleksi, means blue Mandheling select in Indonesian, clear, transparent flavored mandheling grown in Takengon, Aceh. Compared to Biru Seleksi, This Mandheling is small in size of beans, shorter and rounder with high tone bitterness, but flavorful. Depending on roasting degree and technique, this Mandheling may excel Biru seleksi somehow...
Wondering around Kyoto, Japan, along Karasuma street, a arty but very analog sign will catch your eyes. Factory Kafe Kosen is one of the well known a "third waver" in Kyoto ( The States definition of "third wave" is applied here). Hidden in a old, retro looking building near Kyoto Imperial Palace, near Kawasuma-Imadegawa bus stop, there are 2 indications to find this coffee "factory": 1) Hand printed sign shown on right, 2) Number of bicycles in the hallway. Certainly, this coffee roaster has cafe space, cozy and nice, about 6 to 8 seats with a counter table, which allow us to enjoy a fresh hand brewed cup. Woody and retro looking inside relaxes us and makes us forget about time. At the end corner, there are bicycles and roasting machine. Atmosphere at Kafe Kosen is similar to one of SF coffee roaster.
Roasting degree at Factory Kafe Kosen is rather dark, although they say "medium". Influenced by Seattle style roasting, I am assuming, their beans loudly speaks capability issues of roasting machines. Since Seattle style dark roast techniques has been achieved with the high volume/capability machines, it is difficult to apply technique to small size machines often found in Japan. Sorry to say, Japanese Dark roast coffee beans often taste like "charcoal"...Charcoal enough to feel sorry for COE winning beans..
Beans: The Agricultural Cooperative Chojzunil (Chojzunil)
Roasting degree: Medium dark
Roaster: Coffee Kobo Higuchi
Area of production: Chojzunil, santa eulalia,
Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala
Grade: SHB
Screen: N/A
Altitude: ranges around ：1,300m～1,800m
Defects: N/A
Processing: hand picked, fully washed, sun-dried
Variety: Typica, Bourbon
FLO Certified organic, Fair trade
【Impression】
Full bodied, fresh roasted almond and cacao like sweet aroma, juicy vivid citrus flavor and tangy acidity of lime combined with condensed pomegranate syrupy sweetness, moderate bitterness of dark chocolate with pecan nuts crisp flavor, well-harmonized and balanced elegant flavor.
This will give good flavor with both Americano and Espresso, and may give good harmony with milk Hand brew for morning macchinetta in the afternoon.
【The Agricultural Cooperative Chojzunil 】
Located 269 km NW from Guatemala City, Huehuetenango is the home for high quality coffee beans where Chojzunil, santa eulalia village is hidden. This village is blessed with wonderful environments to cultivate coffee beans: foggy, larger difference of the morning and evening temperature. There are about 150 enthusiastic coffee farmers organize The Agricultural Cooperative Chojzunil and focus on organic farming. Although environmentally rich for coffee cultivation, their cultivation were not rich enough due to low level of knowledge in farming. So, some farmers voluntary formed co-op to learn agricultural technology from FEDECOCAGUA to improve quality of their cultivation.
The Agricultural Cooperative Chojzunil is now one of the best micro lot coffee farming estate/mill in Guatemala grows their coffee organically and supports their lives of the village.
Beans: Kenya Kangunu
Roaster: Coffee Kobo Higuchi
Roasting degree: Medium dark
Area of production: Murang'a, 140km NW of Nairobi, Kenya
Kangunu coffee Factory
Grade: N/A
Screen: N/A
Altitude: ranges around ：1,750m
Defects: N/A
Processing: Washed
Variety: Bourbon
Yr of cultivation: 2011
UTZ CERTIFIED
【Impression】
Medium to light, full body, lemony and pink grapefruits citrus aroma, fruity acidity, blackberry and cranberry, combined with dark chocolate like sweetness bottomed with pomegranate syrup, light clear bitterness, complex structure bitterness cored as long lasting aftertaste with tangy acidity. Vivid, lively flavor and aroma with complex flavor.
Unlike the most Kenyan coffee, this Kangunu lot leaves strong citrus impression of pink grapefruits with juicy sweetness rather than earthy spices.
A package From Coffee Kobo Higuchi has arrived! "Kobo" means a small factory like "an atelier", in Italian "bottega", with metaphor of craftsmanship. Certainly, the roaster, Mr. Sehichi Higuchi, refers himself as "a craft-man".
The package contains "Trial set", 300g of freshly roasted coffee beans, three different single origin 100g each with the certification such as Rain forest Alliance, Fair-trade label and so on. How surprising it is to know this costs only 1,000 JPY!
This time, it includes: Kenya Kangunu, El Salvador Las Nubes, and The Agricultural Cooperative Chojzunil, Guatemala.
The specialty coffee boom has aroused public interests in coffee cultivation process, including estates and mills, and has changed the coffee market structure. Now, single origins and estate/mill bland coffees become highly accessible with wider selection with sometimes special price like this. Flavor of coffee relies on both quality of green beans and roasting techniques, so these type of "trial package" reduce barriers to taste arts of new coffee roasters. Reviews will follow as they are tasted and now wish these coffee beans have lively tastes as their aroma is.
Beans: Guatemala
Roaster: Rokuyosha
Roasting Degree: Medium
【Impression】
Dark to medium dark, smooth body, nutty sweetness, roasted black soy beans sweet & bitter aroma, sweetness of Hazel nuts with a tip of cacao nibs bitterness, mellow, mature, well-balanced, a thin layer of light bitterness mixed with a tint, mild acidity of Kumquat, thick sweetness of Dutch black cocoa in core, tangy bitterness followed by a tip of citric acidity as a long lasting aftertaste.
Good combination with almond milk creamer to enhance nutty flavor. Combination with light texture of sweets, like Pâte feuilletée, Palmiers, may create wonderful tea break.
Sourness enhanced once a cup gets cold.
【Note】
Typical Guatemalan flavor: fruity, aroma-full, well-balanced, mellow, light acidity cored with sweetness and average flavor balance. This may fit with water brew methods to extract full flavor, "essence", of the beans.
【Roasting】
Due to roasting volume, light charcoal like bitterness detected when water temperature is high. It seems that high temperature enhance bitterness and diminish Sweetness of beans. Although it's changing, average size of roasting machine in Japan is smaller compared with US. As it said, the highest quality coffee beans has been shipped to this island country so that roasting technique is developed in a aspect of "HOW TO educe flavor of beans". The smaller size roasting machines has higher ability to manage lighter degree roasting, which somehow fits to the country of space limitation.
