Friday, September 01, 2006


peter g's new counterculture colombia c.o.e. la estrella

by now, dear readers, you know how i am when faced with a c.o.e. coffee: i leap outta bed and rush into the kitchen to brew it up in the chemex. and thus it was with peter's coffee from yesterday.

peter roast-dated this colombian huila aug. 29th, making it 4 days old. the beans didn't show a speck of oil that i could see, so i'm calling it city+.

got your scaa flavor wheel handy? why the heck not?

lemme begin by noting that this is from the 2006 first harvest competition, along with andrew b's ecco la virginia. peter paid the farmer, manuel leon, more than US$4 a pound green for this coffee's high quality and shade-grown status -- far more than a fair-trade price.

i brewed it in the chemex, tasted it, and then decided i didn't quite have the grind right -- the coffee wasn't quite as fine in the cup as it smelled, so i can i think grind it up a notch coarser in the saeco 2002 than my "usual" setting for the chemex.

but right off the bat i can tell you this coffee's fragrance is floral, floral, floral. the beautiful perfume of night-blooming jasmine; there's a reason it's called "queen of the night."

as the water hit the fresh-ground coffee, the grounds erupted as the gas escaped -- that's just how fresh this coffee is -- and brought with it an appetizing aroma of warm toast. (no butter, sorry!)

the first sip showered the nose with blonde honey, and i just closed my eyes and stayed with that note. as dougie noted, these colombian c.o.e.'s are changing our perception of what colombian coffee can be.

this coffee dried-down in my mouth like a perfume, leaving a slight dry feeling at the back sides of my tongue, with a perception of vanilla in the aftertaste. on the taste side, of course it's a classically crisp brew.

the body in the chemex was good, but as i said, i think a slight tweak to the grind will make it even better.

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posted by fortune | 8:13 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments