Olympia Coffee / Morning Sun

My local cafe, Necessary & Sufficient, sells Olympia Coffee, which is an interesting choice given I'd never heard of nor seen this roaster before. I have not seen everything but it is not a famous roaster per say, just a mildly notable one, most likely. They have their breakfast blend (which I drank) and they have single origins on the bar but I am not sure if they will make a pour over for you. Even if they did, I have a new no-pour-over policy as a result of a bad pour over and good cup of drip. 

I was meeting someone for the first time, so I just wanted a cup of plain old coffee, and this did the trick. I asked the barista to fill the cup, which he did, although he filled it literally to the brim so it spilled everywhere. I got what I wanted, I guess. 

The coffee was good. I thought it was sweet but not altogether too immensely vibrant. Which is okay. Olympia calls it Medium-Dark on the bag, which I think is perhaps uncharitable given this was not really a dark roast at all. I guess this is a Seattle roaster, so customers have different expectations over there.

I noticed they had this thing listed on their site, "Agtron Roast Color Meter Ground Reading." I looked into this, and found that there is a scale of coffee roast colors. This coffee was marked at 66. As far as I can tell, roasters like Prodigal or Sey roast very lightly, sometimes with a score of 80 or something like that. Higher means lighter, and darker means lower. Pure carbon char is 0. These numbers are based on the Agtron machine's gourmet scale. That machine costs between ten and twenty thousand dollars.

Hyperion / Uganda / Mt. Elgon Bugisu AA Washed

My wife got me this for the memories of Ann Arbor. And it did not disappoint. In fact, this is one of the best coffees I've had from Hyperion full stop. I froze it initially, to finish another bag of coffee. I decided to stop being sick just so I could drink this coffee. Of all the washed coffees I have smelled, this one had a notably sweet and floral fragrance coming out of the bag. I was sad when my sickness flared back up, and I had to leave the bag, which let more of the compounds release and the peak coffee went away.

I even tried it as espresso - it was fine, but I think that is more of a user chose to not dial it in properly and user is not crazy about espresso situation. 

This was a delicious coffee and I would feel burdened by a 5 pound bag but ultimately happy. Don't overlook a region just because it is not one of the famous ones, or because they mix varietals, or because the tasting notes seem common (this is not the first "orange blossom honey" coffee I have had this year). I believe this was actually the same or similar green coffee that I really liked from Printer's Row Coffee. I liked this coffee so much I liked it from two different roasters!

As AeroPress, it unfortunately tasted muddled, and for some reason I got coffee fines in my drink. I enjoyed it most as a pour over and even found myself brewing 30g doses because of how amazing this coffee was.

Nomad Coffee / Guatemala / Concepcion Gesha (Dayglow)

Remind me to never drink coffee outside my house again. I paid $10 for a "hand pour" coffee from a famous roaster, only to get perhaps 250 or 300ml of liquid coffee in a carafe that had stains at the bottom. If I can buy a Sey box for $30 with 250g of beans, I can generate a whole lot of coffee and have a lot more satisfaction. Quick math - 300g coffee at 1:17 ratio (fancy Scandinavian-style) is ~18g grounds, giving me about 13 cups. At Dayglow, that would be about $130... and I clean my decanters. 

The Bloomingdale Trail/606 is a nice trail, but Dayglow isn't even a sterile "4th-wave" cafe like advertised (to be honest, my source is one guy on Reddit). It is way-far-out cafe for hipsters in the ground floor of the "Kimball Arts Center."

Sometimes, I feel like I am chasing this satisfaction from coffee that I will never get. Almost every time I buy a pour over, I always think "was this really worth how much I paid for it?" The answer is usually no. I'd be happier if I just ordered a cup of drip coffee. I did that a week or two ago and it was fine, and I spent like three-something on the cup. It was good! I was happy and remember that cup of coffee fondly.

As for the coffee itself, I do not remember what the notes Dayglow had listed were, and the notes Nomad lists online clash with my memory. It was acidic, had a bit of grapefruit going on, maybe grapefruit peel, and had some juiciness. Good, but maybe I should have just got whatever they had on drip!