Brew Analysis recipes by Kaleb Ede, words by Colin Cahill
So much about this coffee—the origin, the cultivar, and the processing method—excites us here at The Crown, and since getting our hands on it, we’ve played with it in a bunch of our different brewers as well as on our espresso bar. It is the first Brazilian coffee to enter our brew analysis work for most of us on our team, and based on our experiences with it, we are hopeful that we will get to work with more and more lots from such a massive and diverse origin. The coffee brewed up consistently, yielding sweet and well-balanced brews on different devices and brew methods. It performed beautifully on cone, flat-bed, and immersion brewers, as well as on our La Marzocco espresso machine. For this analysis, I want to focus on our V60 brew and on the espresso to highlight both the coffee’s versatility and its dominant tasting notes.
Kaleb, our lead barista, and I played around with it for a while on an AeroPress, examining the contours of the coffee with an immersion method. It yielded a pleasing, smooth malty body and mellow acidity with consistent sweetness. Over and over, we tasted notes of plum, fig, sweet almond, and sesame. To dial down the fatty nuttiness of the coffee and explore the contours of its acidity, we brewed it up on a Hario V60. After a tasty brew with our standard recipe, Kaleb decided to play with the doses of coffee and water, bringing the ratio down to 1:15, coffee-to-water. He added an additional pulse of water into the brew recipe, starting with a bloom dose of 50 grams of water, letting the coffee grounds bloom for 40 seconds, adding 70 grams of water at the 40 second mark, 100 grams at 1:10, and the final pulse of 100 grams at 1:40, allowing it to finish draining with a brew time of 3:50. This brew had a lighter body, but still had a creamy mouthfeel, and it had a much bolder note of plum and stone fruit. A floral note of vanilla stood out in this brew, as well as chocolate. While our brews on the Fellow Stagg had similar degree of chocolate-y notes, the acidity was much softer, pronounced gently in sweet notes of raisin. The brew on the V60 had the most dynamic acidity, but none of our brews were bright.
Kaleb played around with this coffee on our espresso bar, and he and Nate found it to be delicious. It had a buttery mouthfeel and significant sweetness. They tasted brown butter and praline, fresh cherry and blackberry, and notes of caramel, apple, and raisin. While it performs beautifully on a pour over bar, and we have started serving it as a pour over in our tasting room, it is a crowd-pleaser as an espresso, and we are lobbying to feature it on our espresso bar as well. This coffee is perfect as an approachable introduction to the natural process, with softer acidity and lots of classic buttery, chocolate notes, with excellent versatility for service.
