Friday, January 23, 2004


malty!

thus it was with great eagerness this morning that i awoke and practically dove into the kitchen to taste the fresh batdorf guatemala antigua "finca el valle" that arrived yesterday.

this is a bccy kind of coffee: shade-grown, most likely bird-friendly, altho' apparently not actually so certified. jessica didn't give me a roast level, either in common parlance or by whole-bean agtron, so i'm going to guess and call this coffee just a hair past full-city roast, flirting with vienna.

tasting the coffee was as fun as always. note that when tasting or cupping coffee, it helps to do it twice: once when hot, once when cool. when the coffee's a little cooler you get a better sense of the brightness level.

brightness is the term i use in place of the often-misunderstood term-of-art, acidity. acidity in coffee isn't really acid, like ph-level, but a jargon phrase meaning the coffee's sense of "dancing" or "sparkling" on the tongue tip.

here at bccy i use the flavor wheel terminology developed by amazing scaa chief ted lingle (on the left). i call this way of talking about coffee linglese [lin-glaze-ay, along the lines of the italian word for english, inglese].

thus, i'd say this is a medium-bodied, medium-bright coffee, full and nippy, with a sweetly floral fragance somewhat like fresh basil but with a hint of fresh-cut orange, and offering malty, syrupy, and vanilla-y notes. (for my huge discussion of coffee bouquet, wade through this.)

in the interests of a real road test, i then made some up in the cafetiére (a.k.a. press pot) and added a tablespoon of light cream and a pinch of raw sugar. i mean, that's how most humans will actually be drinking it after all.

with the sugar it acquired a pleasant, balanced aftertaste. . . in the objective interests of accurate coffee perception, i poured another cup. . . you can try this coffee yourself, dear readers, right here.

posted by fortune | 11:43 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments