This cup of coffee shifted my beliefs around what washed coffees should taste like. I do not remember much of it (in reality, this post was written nearly two months late), but I do remember being dazzled by how clean it was, how pleasant and sweet, and how badly I wanted to drink it all down. I do not recall all the feelings I had, except that I would gladly drink this again.
Onyx advertises "pear, oolong tea, raw sugar, minerality." These are accurate, but the most intriguing was minerality. I would ascribe that to the clean feeling that you get from water. This was coffee, not watery coffee, but clean coffee. It was sweet and delicious. I bet it would be great in AeroPress.
The big-bearded barista at Shinola is very intelligent, kind, and surprisingly soft-spoken. He opened my eyes to two things - first, that multi-roaster cafes can make good coffee. "Locally roasted" is not always better - some roasters are actually very good and that is why they are popular. Second, washed coffee is not inherently worse. In fact, after this cup, I have been less impressed by natural process coffee. This coming comparison is not fair, but it is true if exaggerated. Natural process is like the hot Cheeto dust of the coffee world – it tastes good and is interesting, but it is not necessarily more impressive and certainly not more refined.
This is not a knock against natural process coffee, I enjoy it greatly, but all coffee is beautiful. Carter from SK Coffee told me that once you get into coffee, you naturally gravitate towards the more interesting processes. He was right, but there is something special about some truly impressive creation of Allah.
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