Despite the current trend in specialty coffee leaning toward fruity, juicy light roasts (which I love!), I think that a really good medium/medium-dark roast coffee is a thing of beauty, and it is something that goes under-appreciated these days. There’s something supremely comforting about a cup that has toasty, fragrant notes of chocolate, nuts, and brown sugar. It’s actually rather difficult to be able to offer a coffee like this year-round, as coffee is a seasonal product, and roasters have to continually sample and source beans from various areas in order to maintain the specific flavor pr ..read more

Vancouver is one of my favorite cities that I’ve ever visited, and while on a short trip to Seattle earlier this year, I made a somewhat spur-of-the-moment decision to hop on a bus and spend a day in Vancouver. While there, I made it a priority to find my way to a 49th Parallel Cafe since it’s quite hard to get these beans in the US. While they do ship their beans to the US, their free shipping over $60 option takes 5-10 business days (unless you pay an arm and a leg for expedited shipping via FedEx), and there’s always a risk of the coffee getting tied up in customs, so I don’t typically opt ..read more

I visited the Rare Bird Coffee Roasters cafe in early January 2023. Normally, I prefer to drink black coffee, but if I see an unusual item on a cafe’s menu, I’ll try it out of curiosity. That morning, I tried their cardamom vanilla latte (very sweet, creamy, and dessert-like), and picked up a bag of this Colombia La Hermosa to take home. It was only a day or two post-roast, but I caught a cold just after this trip, so I waited to try these beans until I was feeling better. Whole bean: Evenly roasted, no oil on the surface of the beans. French press: tart, juicy, with flavors of black tea and l ..read more

I’ve had the pleasure of trying coffee from Ceremony Coffee Roasters before; in addition to their single-origins, they offer blends with nerdy names, and I had made a mental note that someday, I wanted to try their Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis blends. The packaging makes it appear that the Thesis is light, Antithesis is dark, and Synthesis is medium, but from tasting all three, I think the roast levels are closer than the packaging indicates. This review will focus on the Synthesis blend. Whole bean: Based on the appearance of the beans, I’d classify this roast level as a “rich medium”. I ..read more

I’ve had the pleasure of trying coffee from Ceremony Coffee Roasters before; in addition to their single-origins, they offer blends with nerdy names, and I had made a mental note that someday, I wanted to try their Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis blends. The packaging makes it appear that the Thesis is light, Antithesis is dark, and Synthesis is medium, but from tasting all three, I think the roast levels are closer than the packaging indicates. This review will focus on the Antithesis blend. I meant to take a picture of the Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis blends side-by-side to compare ro ..read more

I’ve had the pleasure of trying coffee from Ceremony Coffee Roasters before; in addition to their single-origins, they offer blends with nerdy names, and I had made a mental note that someday, I wanted to try their Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis blends. The packaging makes it appear that the Thesis is light, Antithesis is dark, and Synthesis is medium, but from tasting all three, I think the roast levels are closer than the packaging indicates. This review will focus on the Thesis blend. I meant to take a picture of the Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis blends side-by-side to compare roast ..read more

Early on in my specialty coffee journey, I learned about the “rule of 15s”: for best flavor, use ground coffee within 15 minutes, roasted whole bean coffee within 15 days, and green coffee within 15 months. If this rule of thumb holds true across the industry, that means many coffee roasters could be working with green coffee beans that are a year or more old before they are roasted and packaged/served. Is a year too long for green (unroasted) coffee beans to sit around? Devoción sure seems to think so, and their company practice is to expedite the process from harvest to cup, to make the turn ..read more

I don’t listen to podcasts very often, but one that I do subscribe to is Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast all about “the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds.” Host Dallas Taylor often asks his guests the same question: What is your favorite sound? It’s a great question to ponder: what sound brings you the most joy and fulfillment? The laughter of children? A cat purring? Flowing water? Ever since I first encountered them as a child, my favorite sound in the world has been the sound of difference tones. Musical pitches are sound waves moving at different speeds ..read more

The Ka’u district of Hawaii is the largest and southernmost district of the Big Island, with the North and South Kona districts bordering it to the west. Coffee from Hawaii (Kona coffee in particular) is world-famous for its smooth, sweet flavor profile, but it’s rare to see 100% Kona coffee being sold, as it fetches quite a high price tag. I had received a gift card to Klatch as a birthday present from a dear friend – what’s up, DW – and while ordinarily I wouldn’t have opted to spend THIS much money on coffee, I reasoned that gift cards aren’t about being sensible, they’re about opening the ..read more

Most of the time when I’m doing coffee tastings, I have to evaluate the coffee first thing in the morning because caffeine lingers so long in my system, I can’t sleep properly if I consume caffeine later in the day. It can be a little hard to properly enjoy the coffee if I’m bleary-eyed from a subpar night’s rest. However, this tasting was a refreshing change because, since I was dealing with a decaf, I was able to start my tasting at night, after dinner! It’s nice to be fully awake and fairly relaxed when enjoying a new coffee. There are multiple ways of making decaffeinated coffee. This post ..read more