Happily, our world champion baristas and coffee tasters are doing no such thing. They’re sourcing coffees of great character — juried award winners and coffees from small, family-run farms — roasting them light to remain faithful to the beans’ origins, and letting the coffee speak for itself. Well done.

Costa Rica El Portillo C.O.E.

I admit to having a love / hate affair with Costa Rican coffee the last year or two. From where I sit, Costas have lurched in one of two directions, each at opposite ends of my bell curve of happiness: at the one end, bright, shrill, efferfrickinvescant acidity at the expense of all other character; at the other extreme, big, beefy and dumb-as-a-cow bullion flavors with no dynamic to the cup at all. The exceptions to these extremes can be found far from the big coffee estates on small, family farms… and — happily enough — the Square Mile El Portillo is just such an exception.

Balanced and round, with flavors of honeysuckle and buttery caramel. I find a burst of citrus on the front, and a dark cocoa surprise as the cup cools, and that honeyed sweetness and syrupy body throughout. This is a complex, many-layered cup, and immensely rewarding.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Kenya Muchoki Peaberry

Tremendously bright, crisp, and dry with flavors of tart cherry, and strawberries with fresh-ground black pepper.  Its finish is dry, somewhat distilled and yet — somehow — suggests a candied sweetness. I’m reminded of a top-quality Muscato D’Asti.

The very light roast on this coffee makes for a cup that’s faithful to its origins, but the roaster in me can’t help but wonder if a bit more fire wouldn’t further develop the sweetness that dwells in this bean.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Both of these coffees are highly recommended, and available now, at Square Mile Coffee Roasters.

P.S. It’s worth noting… this is two coffees down, and two to go. More soon.

P.P.S. Sorry about the marginal photography. It was a bit of a rush job.

Notes and Links

1. Note that each name is described by double double letters… Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

THEY’RE ROASTING presidential candidates on Bill Hill, which is not nearly the same as grilling them.

Ashlawn Farm Coffee has introduced an Obama Blend, a “sweet, balanced” combination of “dark and light roasted coffees from Kenya, Java and the Americas,” and American Hero Coffee, “a light-roasted, highly caffeinated” brew that’s “edgy, strong,” made from beans grown in Vietnam. The latter’s redolent, you might say, of Sen. John McCain.

But what about a Hillary Brew?

That, says Carol Dahlke, Ashlawn co-owner and roaster, is … uh … in development.

In development. Hey… they aren’t trying to find a civet cat, are they?

Many moons ago Jeff was kind enough to send along a number of his coffees for me to sample. I enjoyed them each and all, but never quite got around to writing about them. (Okay… so it’s now clear that *I’m* the one who needs to work on his timing.) I figure that was something less than fair of me, so a number of weeks back I ordered some coffee to see what he’s roasting these days, with the intent of writing about *this* batch of beans. I’m glad I did. I enjoyed *this* round each and all, too, but one coffee in particular stands out…

PT’s Kenya AA Kieni Auction Lot is a sweetly perfumed cup, with jasmine-like hues of coffee flower, and… are those violets in its fragrance? Wetted, much of the florals remain, joined by a lower note that I read as amber and a new top-note of citrus. In the cup I find ripe, red grapefruit (seems I nearly always do with better coffees from Kenya’s Nyeri district) as well as flavors of green apple that are by turns sweet and tart. There’s lots of movement — surprising body, actually for a Kenya. The finish is long and sweet and leaves a bit of sweet cherry on the tongue.

This is an exceptionally clean cup. What’s more, it’s a cup that, unlike a great many Kenyan coffees — most all that I’ve tasted, in fact — doesn’t really flex its muscles at you. There’s none of the musky note that’s typical to origin. It’s not broad-shouldered at all… it’s all curves. It’s a Kenyan coffee in touch with its feminine side. And I like it.

Recommended, and available now, at PT’s Coffee.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Most coffee growing countries you may visit you’ll have a hard time scaring up a good cup of coffee. Ask for a cup and often as not you’ll get instant – granules spooned from a tin or a jar kept above the stove. Only Ethiopia — the birthplace of coffee — has had a coffee-consuming tradition for as long as the bean has been cultivated. (Yemen, too, but somewhat less so.) This is changing, and one of the most profound changes may be in Kenya.

For most of Kenya’s 100 years or so of coffee production, it’s been illegal to roast beans for local consumption, all to better assure a steady supply of beans for foreign trade. Those rules have been relaxed… and many more of the traditionally rigid, compulsory practices of the Kenya Coffee Board are being reexamined as Fair Trade principles — and Fair Trade’s higher prices — find their way into the Kenyan economy.

Thus, the latest entry into the Kenyan coffee culture… the iconic coffee shop –

Plush coffee bars are springing up all over the capital, serving home-grown lattes and cappuccinos to young, status-driven Kenyans breaking from the country’s tea-drinking past. Where there were no proper coffee shops in 1999, there are now more than 20. In the gritty city centre alone, Java House, the best-known chain, serves 1,500 cups of premium coffee a day.

“People thought we were crazy to try to sell coffee to Kenyans,” said Jon Wagner, an American former relief worker who co-founded the company eight years ago, and has seen revenues grow every quarter since. “It was virgin territory but we believed a good cup of coffee would always find a market.”

If you’re at all wondering what the Barista Championships are all about, watch the finalist videos at ZacharyZachary and be amazed. (As a bonus the videography is quite good!)

Congrats to Jim, and congrats to *all* of the national barista champions (and that means you, too, Heather Perry!)

• Ever wondered what it takes to get to championship levels in Barista competition? Practice, practice, practice. (Youtube.) I really like Jen Prince’s point of view — and her humble approach to the bean — and having been on the receiving end of one of her stellar espresso macchiatos when I was last in Seattle I think she’ll go far.
  

  I don’t really have much of a life outside of coffee.
  – Jen Prince, Zoka Coffee

  Kindred souls, huh?

• You might want to get in line now for a couple of new beans from Paradise Roasters. I’d love to sample (hint, wink, nudge) the Biloya Special, a small-lot Ethiopian natural process that took top dollar at the 2007 Ethiopia Limited auction, and the Kenya Auction Lot #398 Oakland Estate Gesha which has such an interesting story you should really go read all about it.
• Finally! Some love from Kenneth Davids for Green Mountain’s classic Mocha Java Blend, long one of my faves, and a bit of a sleeper on the Green Mountain offering sheet.

I have long been ambivalent — or at least something of a fence-sitter — where the whole single-cup coffee thing is concerned. Single-cup brewers are, by design, a study in compromise between convenience and quality. Do you want cup-at-a-time accessibility? Or do you want the full range and nuance of aroma, flavor body and balance that only grinding and brewing fresh-roasted beans can offer? I’d kinda like both. But the Clover is out of my price range and wouldn’t fit in my kitchen anyway.

I’ve had my hands on what I believe to be most every at-home single serve coffee machine on the market. That would include (in no particular order) machines from Senseo, Tassimo, Keurig, Nespresso, Melitta, Bunn, Grindmaster, Flavia, Juan Valdez, and Black & Decker. Have I missed any? Oh yeah… the Aeropress. While I’m long overdue in writing a full-blown roundup of the single-cup machine landscape — judging by the numbers of folk who flock to single-cup posts in the Bloggle Archives, anyway — this isn’t that article. Instead it’s about a coffee Green Mountain has just released for the Keurig brewer. A coffee that’s something of a game-changer.

Green Mountain’s Kenyan AA (the traditional, whole bean version) has won accolades from Kenneth Davids at Coffee Review, where he awarded it a whopping 96 points and described it thusly:

A coffee at once voluptuous and austere. Delicately complex aroma: flowers, chocolate, tobacco leaf, lemon grass. In the cup an amazingly rich, wine-like acidity, sweet flowers, and a gently crisp, dry berry fruit. Hints of chocolate re-emerge in the cleanly long, almost perfect finish.

Nice. And now that same bean has been tweaked to perform for the Keurig machine. The roast is a touch darker, to hedge against the Keurig brewer’s wont to make acidity a little shrill. The result is an honest to goodness grand cru coffee in a K-Cup.

The Kenyan AA Extra Bold offers stunning coffee flower and tobacco aromas, winey acidity — held in check, but not tamed by its medium roast — with flavors that include jammy dark fruit and chocolate, and the distinctly sensual, musky note that you will only ever find in a Kenyan coffee. With it, ample — even surprising — body, and a crisp, sweet and resonant finish. And all of it at the press of a button.

This one’s gonna turn a lot of heads.

Jason Anderson and Sharon Grossman, husband and wife co-proprietors of Coffee Emergency, launched into the specialty coffee trade a scant two years ago and quickly made a splash. Code Brown — their signature espresso blend — wowed the Coffee Geek espressorati; no mean feat, that. It’s all the more remarkable given the fledgling company was still working its way out of the nest… they’d just revved up a mobile espresso van and were still roasting their coffee in tiny batches on a gas grill. (Something not altogether unlike like this.)

I get the impression that these folks haven’t let their early success go to their head. Their web site is spare and simple; so’s their shop. Just the same, they continue to pile on the accolades, and recently received a whopping 93 from Kenneth Davids for their Colombian Inza Cauca.

Jason and Sharon submitted three coffees for review: a lovely little Nicaraguan number, a new, limited-edition espresso blend and an eye-opening bean from Kenya. I’ll get to the the others in subsequent reviews (soon, I promise!). Right now, let’s visit Africa.

Coffee Emergency’s Kenya AA Mtaro is a well-developed Full City roast; it offers no evidence of visiting 2nd crack at all save for a few spots of oil, clearly migrated since its August 1 roast. (Each of the three bags I received is very clearly roast-dated and heat-sealed in a laminated valve-bag. Good start!)

This is a classic Kenya coffee: sexy, musky, sensuous. Just ground it effuses jasmine and fine tobacco, while it whispers of sandalwood and worn saddle leather while brewing. In the cup it offers wine-dark fruits, but at its center its flavors lean toward savory — I taste brandied tomato — joined with a persistent but low-toned brightness. Its body is pleasingly round and supple, its finish is clean, semi-sweet and tastes of cedar.

In short, while I’m altogether happy to drink this coffee, I could as well dab some behind my ears and call it a fine cologne. Kenya AA Mtaro is a savory, complex and rewarding cup, and a welcome counterpoint to the too-many lemon-bright Kenyan coffees on the market today.

Recommended. Available at Coffee Emergency.