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.
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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.
