Dan Markham

You can’t always judge a “book” by it’s “cover” but you should always trust your roaster

Sometimes, you have to wonder about awards. I used to look forward to the Oscars. They were an event in my home and we would plan our evening around the show. It was like a sporting event. We would wait with anticipation to find out who won the major awards of the night; cheering on the films, actors and directors we loved; booing those we didn’t. The Oscars defined the world of film for us and we relied on the bestowing of the gold statuette to guide us to the best films on offer for any given year.

Later in my life I was lucky enough to move to a town that had a small but thriving independent movie house. I was lucky, as well, to befriend people with an abiding interest in the remote corners of film. They opened up my eyes to a world beyond the multiplex and convinced me to give the myriad small films on offer — those that lacked the budget to mount multi-city ad campaigns to build the traditional blockbuster’s impenetrable wall of hype — their due. As time went on, my notion of the world of film expanded beyond the narrow constraints of the Oscar contenders and led, eventually, to the realization that an ultimately restricted show like the Oscars — or, for that matter, any awards show — could not possibly contain or represent the incredible variety of quality films on offer every year. The Oscars’ limited definition of what constitutes an award-winning film began to reveal itself for what it was; a specific expression of subjective taste. The films — all immaculately produced and directed, to be sure — were of a certain quality. They were “oscar worthy” films but certainly not, necessarily, objectively, the best films.

I’ve come to view the bestowing of almost any award through the same lens of circumspection with which I grew to view the Oscars. There is no award system that can hope to represent the sheer variety of quality present in any one sphere. The two coffees in question here — Ritual’s CoE Matalapa, La Libertad, El Salvador and their Finca Moreno, Santa Barbara, Honduras — perfectly illustrate this point. One is a recipient of a prestigious award: the renowned Cup of Excellence. The other is a recommendation from a friend with a passion for, and an intimate knowledge of, both, coffee in general and a specific knowledge and expertise on the coffee on offer at Ritual Roasters. One has the endorsement of an internationally recognized award system. The other is a recommendation by a friend.

Lest one read into my analogy things I don’t intend: the Cup of Excellence (CoE) program is a rigorous annual competition designed to ferret out the best coffee any individual participating country has to offer. It’s a prestigious competition and the winners are rewarded with higher asking prices for their agricultural toil and increased awareness of their product in the marketplace. The genius of the program is that any one producer in any one country can enter his or her beans in the competition: from the largest, wealthiest land owner to the smallest, most destitute producer. Through the CoE program, many producers have been able to make a name for themselves and significantly increase the asking price for their green beans. This has been a boon to producers who wish to transition away from the losing financial game of producing a commodity product towards the far more lucrative area of premium coffee bean production. There. See, I like the CoE program. Ok. So, now, let’s get down to business.

What I’m drinking now: Ritual’s CoE Matalapa, La Libertad, El Salvador and Finca Moreno, Santa Barbara, Honduras

Ritual’s CoE Matalapa, La Libertad, El Salvador is a Cup of Excellence winner. In the pour-over cone it produced a clean, sweet, pleasantly lively, light to medium-bodied cup with a mild herbaceousness that emerged as it cooled. In the press-pot, much of the acidity was muted revealing a smoother cup that, somewhat magically, went from medium to full-bodied as the cup cooled. The press-pot seemed to pull out more of the herbaceous character (mint?) and revealed just a hint of something like vanilla. This is not a coffee that hits you over the head, as it were, with it’s various characteristics. It’s a subdued, subtle brew. Elegant, subdued, this is a high quality, solid, if uninspiring coffee.

One of Ritual’s roasters recommended the Finca Moreno, Santa Barbara, Honduras on a recent trip into Ritual. It was one of his favorite coffees in the house, he said. It — and by extension, he — did not disappoint. In my tasting notes I used words like “creamy”, “caramel”, “lime”, “citrusy” and even “earthy”. This, my friends, is a complex coffee. In both preparations I use (the pour-over cone and french press) the body and mouthfeel were amazing. Thick and viscous the Moreno coated the mouth with a heavy liquid that belied the fact that this was still, basically, water soaked in seeds for a few minutes. It was rather surprising. This was one of those coffees that I could drink day after day, week after week and be completely satisfied. And I did. And I was.

That’s another thing. I don’t normally judge a coffee based on it’s longevity. I am a firm believer in freshness. For the most part, seven to ten days is the limit for me. After that, I have found that the flavor of most beans suffers a great deal. Just ask my roommates or take a gander at my coffee drawer and you’ll find I have no compunction with abandoning a half-full bag of beans if I feel that it is suffering from a bad case of old age (don’t worry, I treat people much, much better) but these beans … well … they were like the Energizer Bunny of coffee beans.

I became sick a few days after picking these up. Consequently, I had little drive or opportunity to go after a fresh bag. With my nose plugged up like the Netherland’s coastline, even the freshest, most flavorful coffee would have tasted as flat as a two day old, open-topped can of soda. But the Finca Moreno wasn’t done surprising me yet. I had my doubts when I opened up the bag after my sickness was merciful enough to, at least, allow me to taste my food again but the flavor, the aroma, the body and mouthfeel; there was not a single component of flavor that suffered in any unpleasant way even after two weeks past the roast date.

If I were to hold a contest in my kitchen between these two coffees, the Finca Moreno would have won, hands down. It’s bag had no sticker on the outside proclaiming victory in any sort of competition. What it did have was the enthusiastic endorsement of the person the fewest steps away from my morning cup of coffee. CoE judges are remote endorsers of quality coffee. The everyday person off the street is not likely to have direct contact with a CoE judge. Even if they did, there are several steps between the moment of judgement and the moment you dip that two tablespoon scoop into your bag of beans in the morning. All of them have a direct effect on quality. How was the batch that ends up in your drawer at home handled at origin? What were the conditions of it’s trip to our shores? How was it stored before and after shipment? How was it delivered to the roaster? How did the roaster store it? Finally, how was it roasted? A CoE winner has as much potential to end up being a bad cup of coffee as any other bean and there are any number of steps — from bush to cup — that can influence that end result. Neither of these was a bad cup of coffee but one was more complex, had more character and a better personality than the other.

In this day and age the price of information has hit rock-bottom. And it’s all about the information. Want to know where the best restaurant is? Yelp or Google is there to serve you. Want the lowest price on this, that or the other widget? There are any number of sites dedicated to providing you a complete list of competing prices for any given product. Want to know which movie you should see tonight? There are a myriad different ways to get a recommendation. From movie rating sites to the ever increasing number of possible awards there are to give to films today (even the poor Oscars have had just a little of the shine taken off the statuette with the plethora of awards shows and film festivals that cater to every conceivable taste), it’s obvious that there is no lack of information in this modern world. It’s the quality of information and, more specifically, the personal utility of that information that matters. I want my information as fresh as I want my coffee. I want relevancy. I allowed my movie aficionado friends to trump the Oscars, I allow the music fanatics in my life to trump the radio and I will allow the roaster I know to trump a CoE label any time at all.

What I’m Drinking Now: The Four Barrel Memory Test Edition

Four Barrel’s né Stumptown’s Panama Duncan (on flickr)

I have three bags of beans awaiting review. Backed up, their flavors and aromas slowly fading from my palette, they await their turn in the spotlight here at danmarkham.net. in this post, I intend to take care of them all at one fell swoop. My other life has been calling, lately, so It’s been some time since I bought, let alone sampled, any of these coffees (I have since moved on to others and I hope to give my current store of beans their due sooner rather than later). You, dear reader, are going to have to have some faith in my taste memory — and, to be honest, so am I — especially for the first bag, less so for the other two. But let’s see what we can do.

It’s a bit of a Four Barrel love affair here, I admit, but it’s also a love of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, in Portland, OR and an appreciation of the fact that Four Barrel’s carrying Stumptown’s beans, for the time being, affords anyone, with access to the new kid on the Mission café block, an outstanding oppurtunity to sample an incrediblly wide variety of Stumptown’s coffee, sans shipping charges or the cost of a plane ticket with the destination PDX. I look forward to the day I am able to sample something that comes directly from the back of the house at Four Barrel but, until then, easy access to the products of a seminal west coast roaster is no bad thing.

So, here we go, in descending chronological order …

Guatamela, Finca El Inherto, Bourbon Varietal

Like I said above, this coffee is going to take a bit more heavy lifting, on my brain’s part, to remember anything specific — especially since I see no reference to it on Stumptown’s site any longer — but the general gist of it is this: this is a nice, solid coffee. It has a bit of the dusty spiciness that I remember getting in other Guatamalans with good sweetness and a mellow dose of acidity. It’s not a coffee that is going to hit you over the head with any type of unusually bold flavor but it’s not going to throw you any curve balls either so I suppose it’s all in the way you look at it.

Panama Duncan

Our next contestant hails from the home of the great Panama Canal, a country known as … well … Panama. I’ve reviewed a Panama before — Ritual’s Panama Boquete, Finca Berlina – and, whatta ya know, there is a bit of the same savory character found in that coffee, right here. This time, though, it was not as pronounced. The acidity was, let’s see, if memory serves, more bright than the guatemala mentioned above, with a more medium bodied feel.

Ethiopia Mordecafe

I intended to pick up a bag of Colombian. I wanted to compare and contrast it with the Guatamala, the memory of which, at the time, was definitely fresher. No luck, though, as it’s shelf was bare on the day I entered. Instead, I was drawn to this particular African coffee for the lack, in it’s description, of any overarching berry flavors. I love a nice, berry sweet Ethiopian as much as the next brown-blooded coffee drinker but it seems, these days, that is all you get: a dry-processed Ethiopian bursting with berries. Wonderful, but I thought it was time to try something different (ironic, that an Ethiopian without berry flavors is what could be considered different, these days).

There was a lot of talk, on the description, of sugar and candied lemon peel that made it sound as if there was going to be a veritable symphony of sweet and citrus but I thought it was all a bit more subdued than that. The flavor that was put forth on the description that did, in fact, reveal itself to me, was that of Oolong tea. This was, probably, the most unique aspect of this coffee, quite possibly making it the most unique of the three in this review and elevating it to something quite unusual with respect to the entire portfolio of beans that I’ve tried. Very nice and, as stated above, a welcome change of pace from the surfeit of Ethiopian berry-bombs out there today.

Dat’s Dat

So, there you go. Three coffees in one post. It’s a precedent setting event here. There are, of course, many more offerings to be had. At some point I hope to have given them all a little bit of my time.

Panama Boquete, Finca Berlina from Ritual

What I’m drinking now: What I was drinking then (yes, this baby is long gone now, french pressed into oblivion): Panama Boquete, Finca Berlina

I have a friend who nailed it: “savory”. That’s opposed to sweet. I say “brothy”. Does this sound like the description of a coffee you might want to drink? Well, If it doesn’t, it should. This was a fascinating coffee. Lively, spicy, rich plus all of the above. I really have never tasted anything like it.