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.  

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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. 

George Howell Coffee / Kenya / Kirinyiga Mamuto AB / Washed

After drinking that magnificent Ethiopian a few weeks ago, I was advised to try the Mamuto AB from George Howell. That Ethiopian, this Mamuto AB, and the matching Mamuto AA are the three coffees that George Howell stocks full time. Every other coffee is rotating. I loved the Ethiopian, which was super sweet and silky. I was informed I would enjoy this one.

This coffee is very sweet and bright and deposits sweetness on your mouth that remains for hours. It is not as thick and syrupy as the Ethiopian. The chocolate note is crisp - probably because it is a medium roast. I did not like that aspect. And I struggled to get a brew that I found truly delicious. I struggled to dial in on my Kalita, and was not shocked by the French press (I do not like French press in general, though). I got good results from Aeropress. 

My favorite brew was the Tim Wendelboe, stronger recipe. I think this coffee would be excellent as a moka pot and as espresso, as George Howell themselves call out. Regardless, I spent my final 20g of beans on this final moka-pot-style brew, which was the right amount of bitter and exploding with juice and fruit. Wow. It was an impressive. It felt like there was actual fruits popping on my teeth. This is comparative to other "medium roast" coffees, bear in mind, but I thought it was an excellent brew. 

My biggest learning this time around is that I prefer light roasts. I was weirdly finding it hard to dial in medium roasts - not because they are hard to dial in, but rather because I wasn't getting the results I wanted. The results I wanted were just light roast coffee! The other learning is that Aeropress is the best brew method. Just brew it on Aeropress!

Hyperion / Colombia / Huila Luis Enrique & Robinson Cuellar / Washed Pink Bourbon

One of my methods for grading my enjoyment of coffee is how much I crave it after or how much I remember it. I think that the mechanism for this is actually how much sweetness the coffee leaves on my tongue – I have no idea how the physics of that work. In any case, I really enjoyed this coffee after it cooled down to "warm at best," and it had a wonderful sweetness. The top end of the temperature was a bit too acidic for me, but as it cooled down, I found it had this pleasantness that this terroir and varietal combination often makes. 

I do think coffee is always a perception thing. The same coffee can be labeled with different notes and your brain will try to match them up. The point of coffee is not tasting notes, though. The point is whether you like it or not. I remember this coffee fondly. 

Wesley Andrews Coffee & Tea / China / Yunnan / Red Honey Double Ferment

I am usually wary of cafes that roast their own beans but have an air of non-commercialty to those beans that they roast. You need to start somewhere, I guess, but I feel like those smaller roasters usually do not make coffee that lives up to snuff. I thought Wesley Andrews was a multi-roaster, which they are, but multi in addition to their own coffee. 

I ended up at Wesley Andrews after going to FRGMNT, one of the original specialty cafes in the Twin Cities. FRGMNT is a multi-roaster, but I was in search of a pourover. FRGMNT will only do batch brew and espresso. A good principle, and it certainly helps them make money and have consistent quality. High throughput cafes should not do hand brew coffee because hand brew coffee is impossible to do consistently at pace. I should not be so beholden to the "pourover," because I think good coffee is not about the brew method. 

Wesley Andrews had two roasters on rotation today, themselves, and Heart. Both Heart roasts were Colombian so I immediately overlooked them. Yunnan caught my eye — never had coffee from there before! I usually associate Yunnan with pu-erh. Actually, I only started this association a few days ago after reading the Wikipedia page on pu-erh. I knew Yunnan produced coffee but I was never presented with the option. 

The pourover took a long time to arrive — in the meantime, we had also ordered one of their permanent specials, a matcha Thai tea. It was not good. The matcha was all in one big glass milk bottle and was premade and looked watery. The Thai tea itself was not too brightly colored but was weirdly spicy. Overall, the whole drink was a little bit too watery and spicy, which was peculiar. 

The coffee finally came and on first sniff I knew I was in for a little bit of sadness. The fermentation of the bean did not bring out anything interesting except for vague fermentation. Maybe this is a product of the lack of subversion they did to me — no notes on the bag, no helpful information on what thoughts to form — but it just kind of tasted earthy and fruity with low acidity. Perhaps this was not the best representation of the terroir. 

Haan Coffee / Colombia / Edwin Norena / Honey & Watermelon Mossto Co-Ferment Castillo

I was about to say that everyone in Colombia feels outdone by Sebastian Ramirez and Diego Bermudez, but then I learned that Edwin Norena actually is the father of co-fermentation and was famous maybe over a decade before Ramirez and Bermudez. That being said, co-fermentation is cool and all, and this coffee tasted just like jolly ranchers, but that is exactly the problem with the coffee! It tasted just like jolly ranchers! It is like a cool trick. Back flips are really cool, and require a lot of skill, but can I use a backflip every day? 

I should break down the name of the coffee. ChatGPT told me castillo is a varietal common to Colombia, and the honey and watermelon are added in a vat with the coffee cherries to ferment. "Mossto" is the juice of the coffee cherries that helps macerate the cherries and control fermentation. Macerate means to soften, often by soaking in liquid.

Complaining is probably out of order. This was a tasty coffee. All the notes were crystal clear. There was no winey-ness. You could show it to someone who would be totally surprised at the coffee. And if you were not given the list of notes, you probably would not say jolly rancher since that is not a flavor you (hopefully) associate with coffee. I would have loved to see what it would taste like as a cold brew or in a milk drink, though. That would be very interesting. 

Haan Coffee / Cold Brew

Sometimes, I like to wax poetic about coffee and how tasty it is and whatnot. This time, I wanted to widen my horizons, go out of my comfort zone, and order coffee with milk. It was also hot outside, and hot coffee didn't seem too appealing to me at that moment. Since I was also out for a work conference, I thought why not spoil myself and upgrade my cold brew to a cold brew with a "creme top." Not only did it sound delicious, but it also looked very pretty in people's cups. 

Unfortunately, they put mine in a rather ugly to-go cup. Even worse, I ended up with coffee with milk, instead of just coffee, even though I wanted coffee. There goes expanding my horizons. 

I will say that I respect those who order a cold brew with creme top. It is tasty. Unfortunately, the creme top covers the coffee flavor which I crave so badly. I love coffee. Give me coffee. Ideally a sweet, buttery, clean coffee. 

Lineage / Colombia / Sebastian Ramirez / Washed Pink Bourbon

I usually try to avoid vague labels like the grower, because you can't usually Google them. In this case, you can totally Google Sebastian Ramirez. Lineage is probably one of the more notable specialty cafes in the Orlando coffee scene, which is relatively small but nothing to scoff at. One thing I was grateful for is that they did not serve any alcohol – many of the cafes in Orlando also served wine or beer in the evening. 

They had a very interesting baklava syrup, which we ordered in a matcha latte along with a salted honey cruffin. The baklava syrup tasted correct and the cruffin and croissant were both good. 

The coffee was great. This is not the first washed pink bourbon I have had from Sebastian — I had one from SK Coffee last year. One notable thing to highlight is that this was definitely reminiscent of the other coffee, but not the same. In that post, I question what "pink bourbon" means. A trip to the Hyperion Ypsi bathroom (unfortunately unblogged) opened my mind — coffee varietals are descendants of each other (see Cafe Imports tree). People differ on whether pink bourbon is a child of bourbon, but no one disagrees that is a fantastic varietal. 

The notes on the bag were accurate. This was an unoffensive coffee that you wouldn't get tired of, but not something I'd have as my daily driver. I did like it, though. Perhaps it was a bit too inoffensive. I guess that is what I get for ordering what I saw as the most recognizable name on the list.