5/27/2010

Coffee Spotlight Guatemala

Cup to Cup has had some requests for greater info, insight, and knowledge

on our coffees. In a neverending effort to appease, assuage, affirm, and

acquiesce to our loving and adoring fan's thirst for all things coffee, we are

introducing the first installation of Coffee Spotlight. In Coffee Spotlight

we will . . . spotlight a coffee.

In our first episode (presentation, exploration,

knowledge emancipation) we’ll be taking a look at the newest member

of the Cup to Cup family, our Guatemala Huehuetenango. As we’ve mention

about this coffee before, it is found in the highlands of Guatemala.

Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Desarrollo de Concepción Huista

(CODECH)is composed of four coffee producing organizations: Bitenam,

Coop. Axolá, Asoc. ADIPY, and ADINTHEC, and is also involved

with a Teachers and Womens Counsel.

This is a fully washed coffee and is comprised of Caturra, Catuai, Bourbon,

and Pache varietals. It's grown between 1200 and 1800 Meters.

Here's the Guatemalan flag, just in case you were wondering.

You may or may not be interested in knowing that the tenango in

Huehuetenango is the equivalent of burg or ville here in the U.S.

with Huehue being descriptor of location. So if it helps, you could

Say this coffee is from Huehueville.

This is all well and good, you say, but what does it taste like?

What are its characteristics? How should I (would I, could I) prepare this

at home? Excellent questions, we say. While it is not our general

policy to tell you exactly how (why, when) you should prepare your

coffee in your own abode, we would be happy to share with you the

different ways that we’ve tried this coffee and what our perceptions were

based on those methods. After that, you’re on your own. Happy exploring!


What we did was try this coffee using four (4) different brewing methods;

the Hario V60 cone, a French press, a Chemex, and a normal

drip coffee pot. We’ll go through the brewing ratios we used for each

method and how tastes and characteristics changed for each one. Hold

on to your mugs.

Hario V60

The Hario V60 is a conical ceramic manual drip coffee maker.

It’s also awesome. Anyway, we brewed 17 grams of coffee with 260 grams

water with a brew time of approximately two and a half minutes. Here’s our thoughts:

The aroma (what we’re calling the smell of the coffee grounds wet) was of

rich (not wealthy) flowers. The cup (what we’re calling the finished product

in the cup) had the smell of milk chocolate. The flowers were still

present too, so it was kind of like dipping flower petals in milk

chocolate. The cup was very clean, meaning not so much that it was

properly washed (which it was) but that the taste was not muddled.

The flavors were clear and articulate. Were you to be given a chart listing

15 different flavors, you could easily pick out the three that shone through in this cup.

All in all the we thought this coffee worked very well with the V60.

French Press

We’re pretty sure you know what a French Press is, but just in case you don’t, here’s a picture.



When brewing for the french press we used a ceramic press we keep at the shop.

We’ve never tested the pros and cons of using ceramic instead of glass, maybe we’ll

look into that in a future post. We used the ever popular 60 to 1

ratio, that is, 60 grams of coffee to 1 liter of water. But we didn’t have

a liter French press so we had to take out a math book and figure out how

to get that ratio at smaller quantities. We’re musically minded so we thought

of it as transposing. Anyway, we brewed 42 grams of coffee to 700 grams

of water (knowing we were brewing 700 grams so we took the original brew

per liter (60) and multiplied it by 7, lopping off the zeroes because they don’t

matter, which gave us 42, or something like that). So. As a French press,

Huehueville still gave us a clean flavor, thought the flower notes were

less pronounced. The body was full and the flavor was smooth, like

peanut butter or Nutella is smooth.


Chemex

The Chemex is a laboratory looking coffee brewing device

that is made of one piece of glass, with a filter sitting on top. Like this.




For the Chemex we used the 60 to 1 brew ratio again, but halved it, giving us

30 grams of coffee to 500 grams of water with a brew time of nearly three and a half

minutes. While we were brewing, the

rich aroma that we got from the V60 returned, but leaned a little more

towards the milk chocolate and less towards the flowers.

The cup smelled extremely chocolatey. The flavors found in the V60 were

all there, but less intense. In all, it was more chocolate bent, but less

articulate that the V60.

Auto Drip

“But,” you say, “I don’t have any of those fancy gadgets, what about

us regular people?” While all the other brewing methods are very

accessible and sometimes more affordable the the traditional drip

brewer, we understand most of you just have a coffee pot. Don’t worry,

we have one too. We got it at Target, just like a regular person. Here it is.




We brewed two ounces of ground coffee with 36 ounces of water

(moving slightly away from fancy measuring, just for you). The bright flavors

we experienced in the Chemex and the V60 were there, but more subdued.

The body was still full and the aftertaste lasted longer this time. Not a bad

aftertaste, just a longer one.


Roast Profile

Some have asked us to include our roast profile in this. We’ve decided

not to. Not because we’re hiding how we roast our coffee, but because we

think that for most of you it won’t add any more insight into the coffee

other than to add another variable that you may or may not know how

to interpret, which could lead to misconceptions about the coffees

you know and love. If you are a roaster of any sort (professional, home) we’d

be happy to give you our notes.

We’ve also been asked the degree of roast. We’ve

seen a wide variety of people call a wide range of roasts the same thing,

so we thought it would be best to just show you a picture of the coffee itself

and let you decide. We call it a Full City roast. You might call it something

different. Also our shop’s official camera is located on (in) a phone, so

the quality isn’t the best available on the market today. Nevertheless, here’s a

picture of both the unroasted and roasted bean.

Conclusion

In conclusion, that was a whole lot of information and we hope it was helpful

to you in some way. Please give us feedback as to whether or not you

liked this article as it took quite a while to compose and we’d rather not

write such long things unless you really enjoy it. If you did enjoy it, we’ll

write ‘em till the cows come home. Till next time. Peace.

Addendum

After our own personal review, we submitted this coffee to Coffee Review, a

professional coffee evaluation company. On a 100 point scale, we received

  an 89, which we think is not too bad.

Here are some of the feedback we got from the coffee:

Blind Assessment: Aromas of cocoa, aromatic wood and butter

complicated by hints of nut and baking spices. In the cup gentle yet

sustained acidity, round balance and

cherry-like fruit and chocolate notes, with the cherry becoming

particularly explicit as the cup cools. In the finish the chocolate turns

bittersweet under the influence of a mild astringency.

You can read the full review here