Starbucks / Sunsera Blend

My wife and I recently found a Starbucks gift card lying around, potentially from 5-10 years ago, and we were surprised to find $5 on it. I debated what to get (how could I maximize their toil for $5?) but ended up just realizing that I should use it to spend money on coffee on my drive to move from Ann Arbor to Chicago. 

I was also very excited to see the Clover machine in real life. It is possible that I saw it before, but this was the first time I saw the machine in real life and realized what it was. I learned about it from James Hoffmann's recent video on why everyone uses the V60 (in short, Starbucks bought Clover, a company that made a high-tech single cup brewer, which was rapidly gaining popularity. The industry revolted and needed a cheap replacement. The V60 fit the bill). 

The machine brews very fast, which was nice to verify personally. The cup of coffee was also good, in terms of the mechanical extraction of the coffee from the bean. 

I ordered the Sunsera Blend - Starbucks, at least the one I stopped at in Battle Creek, is not on the single-origin wave yet. It was $3.13. The notes advertised were"bright citrus & toasted almond." I definitely got a lot of almond, sort of a bouncy flavor, like an almond. "Blonde Roast" is a very flexible term, I think. I would call this a light-medium roast at best. 

If I had to buy Starbucks, I would buy this again. I liked it. It exceeded and fell under my expectations simulteneously. I was hoping for a stellar cup of coffee - this was not that. It however, was not a bad cup of coffee. 

Square Mile Roasters / Ethiopia / Guji Shoondhisa / Natural Gibrinna & Serto (FRGMNT)

It was one year since my dukhla and since I started living with my wonderful wife, so we decided to treat ourselves to some coffee. In reality only I got coffee and she wanted a different treat. None of the drinks caught her eye. We did try a new cafe, though, FRGMNT North Loop, which is in a hallway, similar to SK Coffee’s roastery location. 

FRGMNT is a multi-roaster cafe that focuses on what I’d call A-tier roasters, not S-tier. These tiers are in the popular conception, not in the flavor of the coffee. Think Heart, Black & White, Square Mile, not DAK, AMOC, Apollon’s Gold. So they can serve a (batch brew) cup of coffee for $3.26 instead of the $13 pour overs being served at nearby Harmony. They also only do batch brew and espresso. They don’t list out the coffees on offer neatly and just write the country of origin by the price of the espresso. 

My experience at a cafe is heavily impacted by the barista. I asked this barista what they had on batch brew, to which he responded they had an Ethiopian and a Kenyan. At the time I was probably more irritated than I should have been, since those were very informative. I was at a fancy multi-roaster cafe, so I was perhaps expecting just a little more detail. I asked if he could tell me more. However, the barista just started telling me how the Ethiopian has a “peach mango situation,” at which point I noticed behind him the carafes had the details written, with roaster and process. If he had told me that the Ethiopian was roasted by Square Mile, I would have been able to pick that faster. I was excited to try a coffee from James Hoffman’s company. 

I however was not excited to drink a natural process. This one did not have the bubble letters quality that some naturals have, though, so I’m not upset. 

I didn’t know this until after I ordered, but this was the Shoondhisa harvest that I also had at Anthology the other day. That one was a washed process though. I also saw this same bean on several different A-tier roaster sites. I felt like this was sort of a hive mind moment for the coffee industry. They all share importers, the importer sent them all a sample, and they all bought this one. It’s good coffee but how do I differentiate roasters who all serve the same beans? You have to respect Hyperion for trying to go against the grain, despite it sometimes causing them to suffer quality issues. 

Had I been more well informed on the coffees on offer, I would have picked the Kenyan! I was just in a mood about Kenyans, I’m on my second in a row right now at home. 

Alas, it was good coffee. I don’t remember it all that well, which is not that great of a sign. But for $3.26, I was very happy to have a proper cup of coffee instead of a cup of hot gas I tried at the hospital once, out of desperation. In hindsight I feel like it was the wrong beverage for the occasion. We went for a walk. I should have gone to Spyhouse down the block, gotten a nitro cold brew, and been super buzzed and cold. Maybe it would have cost extra, though, which could affect the SPDs. 

I think about mangos differently than most people. To me, mangos are bright and uber-sweet with a borderline custard flavor. No coffee I’ve had, barring the $20 Sey coffee has had something approaching that flavor profile. Stop putting mango in the notes when you mean something else. 

George Howell Coffee / Burundi / Mutana Hill / Washed French Mission Bourbon (Comet Coffee)

I was supposed to meet up for coffee with a friend but it ended up being solo experience. This was the #4 on the Comet menu, so an expensive risk. Thankfully my cousin gave me $10, so this was a sponsored event. I'm really interested in washed coffee right now. I feel like natural coffee has sort of a curved edge that I am not a huge fan of, and I like more of the coffee taste. 

This coffee tasted sweet. It had fruity notes. My wife says blackcurrant tastes something between a wild blueberry and a grape. This coffee certainly fit into that box very well. 

Sometimes, I find that washed coffees have this sort of grainy flavor. I experienced it with this Honduras from Hyperion, although with that one, it was more intense. I have started to call this flavor "dirty," as the opposite of "clean." Clean coffee is very good and makes for easy drinking. Dirty coffee can be bothersome and difficult to drink. 

This did not have a syrupy body, and no strong acidity. I chose it over a Colombian that would have certainly been more acidic. Comet definitely presents more sweet coffees over more acidic ones. They usually platform older roasters like George Howell, 49th Parallel, and Ritual. Sometimes I think about what coffee would have been like in 2006. Since we are moving to Chicago soon, I think about Intelligentsia often. Someone online said that Intelligentsia was cool in 1997 but now it is just boring. That is probably true for a cafe in the ground floor of the first skyscraper in the world. Regardless, Intelligentsia is a quality roaster I am excited to have as my "local" roaster. 

Back to the above coffee. I liked it. I'd drink it again. It was a good experience. Comet was unfortunately too loud to focus on drinking coffee. 

Dogwood Coffee / Kenya / Murang'a Gondo AB / Washed

Dogwood is one of the OGs of the Twin Cities specialty coffee scene. I've been there once before (I had a Ugandan), and managed to get five punches on my punchcard. Imagine my disappointment when I bought a bag of beans ($23), a pack of AeroPress filters ($10), and a bottle of kombucha ($4) and got 0 punches. Horrible! They should change that policy.

I was actually in search of a sweetness-forward light roast blend when I got this coffee, but that presently escapes me. I was in Minnesota, and needed a bag of beans. I wanted to buy something from a local roaster, or even what was in stock at a multi-roaster like FRGMNT. I needed a daily driver. I didn't want something experimental (SK Coffee is exceptional for that), and Spyhouse Coffee was a bit too second wave for me. Backstory Coffee was out of the way.  The "Panaroma" blend from Dogwood caught my eye, but "fruity and floral" is not what I want. I want natural sweetness! 

It was either this or a "special" roast, this Ecuadorian natural. Since I've been into east African coffee recently (the Mamuto AB, the Kenya Gicherori I had in Uzbekistan, and the beautiful Worka Chelbessa from George Howell), I decided to go with the Kenyan. It was promising. 

My first brew was on AeroPress, using the James Hoffman technique, and I got a very light bodied cup with a soft sweetness. I liked it, but I wanted a more intense brew, which I think is a little unreasonable for such a light roast. I tried to dial up the brew several times on the subsequent days, but ended up getting more acidity instead of more sweetness. The acidity was rather vegetal. 

I think that an assumption I made is that Kenyan and Ethiopian coffee would be similar. They are really not. I read online that many people concur, and so I think for anyone who wants to explore coffee, try to rid yourself of assumptions like "two places by each other should make similar things." There was a period of time where I learned way too much about cheese (which, by the way, is far less documented online than coffee), and two sheep on two different sides of a mountain can make two cheeses that do not resemble each other at all. The grass, precipitation, sunlight, sheep behavior, and any other variable can be different. Same with coffee, I am sure. 

I am excited to brew this one in my Kalita and as espresso, especially now that we are getting a little further from the roast date.  

--

Now that it has been a while since I initially purchased the coffee, I've drank the whole bag and have my thoughts. This was a difficult coffee to brew, I thought. I brewed it as Kalita (fine), espresso (not good), and as V60 (fine). I reached the conclusion that this coffee was underdeveloped. I don't think a Kenyan coffee should have vegetal notes. There was a lot of syrupy body and sweetness, but it was kind of overwhelming and uninteresting. And the "medjool date" notes advertised on the bag seemed to be just a polite way to say "sweet and sandy." 

I repeatedly brewed this one at different grind sizes and temperatures and dosages and methods, and never got the slightest bit of fruity sweetness. In fact, drinking this coffee and being disappointed over and over that it was just a syrupy, boring coffee with no dynamism made me crave an acidic, fruit-forward coffee because of how tiring this coffee was. 

I think my lesson here is that coffee doesn't need to be "sweet" or "syrupy." I like all coffee, it sort of just depends on the time. I'm happy to drink anything, but I do like something of a higher quality. I believe that Dogwood got an uninteresting lot, struggled to roast it to develop the sugars into something more interesting, and decided to under-roast it and say "medjool date, tomatillo" and call it a day. 

I think roasters can be a bit lazy if they do that. I struggled a lot while brewing because of the density of the bean. The beans were very lightly roasted and very dense, which made them a pain to grind and difficult to brew. I choked several brews and on espresso it just was not worth the difficulty of dialing it in with my Bambino. 

I haven't written off Kenyans, nor have I written off Dogwood. I just need to keep in mind my knowledge of coffee when buying coffee. And there is nothing wrong with a darker roast- sometimes that is what hits the spot, and I should be okay with that.