Thursday, December 11, 2008

Not raining ... pouring!

Regular readers will notice that I sometimes go through droughts in which I haven't tasted much worth mentioning. Well, the last week has been the reverse. Let's skim over it:

Brewed coffee:

Kenya Gethumbwini from Hazel: Grapefruit, creamy mouthfeel, dry.

Kenya Kitamaiyu from the Source: Tea, lemon sherbet.

Kenya Muchoki Peaberry from Square Mile: Crisp, strawberry, citrus.

Esmeralda from BBB: Mark NAILS the roast and it actually lives up to all of the ludicrous overseas tasting notes; floral, perfumed, peach ... can't even remember what it tasted like ... it just threw everything at us and stood out in the blind cupping by a mile.

Dale Sidamo from BBB: Peach, from memory.

Nicaraguan Natural from BBB: As always, mega clean coffee with natural process blueberry superimposed on top of it.

Espresso:

Kopi Luwak from Instaurator: Can't remember in much detail, but it was pretty ordinary, at best.

Devon Estate SL-795 from Instaurator (the monkey picked coffee): Black pepper up front, quite heavy in body, whilst it had a fair bit of acidity at the same time. Very heavy in body at the bottom of the cup ... wonder if the monkey spit was still left on it. A number of us agreed that the espresso machine must have been running cold, though. (Inny had gotten ECA to send down a Giotto Premium Plus for the event, as he isn't a fan of LM/Synesso ... ironically, I suspect that we could have gotten a lot more out of the coffee on the Synesso ... should've mentioned it whilst we were there. Actually, Inny had bought some new mountain top down to feed the Synesso ... totally didn't twig that it was there and taste it. Damn.)

... so that's ... like ... seven pretty good coffees in less than a week ... craaazy ...

I have to say that I feel almost swindled by the Kenyan coffees that I have tried this year. The stereotypical and much loved berry flavours seem to have been transmogrified into crisp citrus flavours in practically everything. Still some great coffee, to be sure, but I'm still hoping to get something in the same genre as the Mamuto, let alone in the same ballpark taste-wise. Anyhoo, this will be the subject of the first article on my new web page and I'll probably syndicate that to the new mag that's being launched.

Labels: , , , ,