i've been selling coffee from haciendala minita in costa rica longer than i've beenroasting coffee. i've had it every year that i have beenroasting and it's the only coffee that i can say that i've carried every year for thatentire time. the coffee has been remarkablyconsistent
what does light roast coffee mean, over at least the past two decades. i visited the farm in 2000 when they purchased the mill that processes their coffees and returned for the harvest the followingyear to see it in operation. the care and attention to detail inevery aspect from the nursery
to preparing the coffee for export shows in this consistently excellent coffee. if you go to costa rica and look at the tourist stuff in the airport shops you'll find a lot of things with the words pura vida on them. pure life. this is coffee that could perhaps be called pura cafe pure coffee. there aren't any undesirablecharacteristics that need to be masked there aren't any unusual flavors thatneed to be accentuated
it tastes like coffee and it's a coffeewhere i want to focus on the fundamentals of a good coffee: sweetness, body, acidity, intensity of flavor and most importantly the balance among these traits. while deciding how to roast this i'mlooking for two distinct roasts. first there's a medium roast, by which i mean a coffee that is taken at least to the start of second crackbut has none of the carbony tastes that are expected in adark roast coffee.
i'm evaluating the fundamental traitsthat i mentioned earlier and trying to find the best balance among these. i'm also looking for a dark roast. i wantsomething that's both very obviously a dark roast but that also still has that balance that iwant in the medium roast. this is a coffee that is veryconsistent in delivering what i'm trying to find inthe finished product but how i get there will vary from onelot to the next. the lack of distracting elements in
flavor makes this a great coffee fortrying different approaches to roasting so here i've roasted three batches ofcoffee keeping them about the same through thestart of first crack. from first crack through the end of theroast one batch takes a very fast roast through the end one batch takes a very slow roast through the end and another takes a rate between those. from each of these i've pulled severalsamples to cup starting a bit prior to second crack and ending in the french to italian roast range.
i should have cups that are lighter thanwhat i want from the medium roast and cups that aredarker than what i want from the dark roast from each of these batches. chemically there is a lot going on where these roasts differ so i expect significant differences inhow these cup. the fastest of these roasts had sampleswith the best aroma out of all of these but this came at the expense of taste andbody. the samples were generally thin and tasteless. the seventh sample on the first sip seemed like it might make a good dark roast but as it cools
there's not enough there for this to bean enjoyable coffee. if the goal is to produce a coffeethat you can toss in your car to make it smell good something alongthis line is perfect but if we care how the coffee tastes wecan probably do better than this. the slowest of these roasts emphasizedbody. the samples along this line are smoothand heavy but at the expense of acidity. this means most of these samples can fairly be described as flat or dull. the sweetness comes up around the fifthand sixth samples
and with that fifth cup in particularthere are a lot of people who would enjoy that as a medium roast despite the lack of acidity or perhaps because of it. while that's not what i'mtrying to find i could understand another roasterchoosing something close to this maybe just a little bit faster to giveit a little more vibrancy. between these roasts we find balance. the aroma is not as intense as our fastroast but it's still pleasant. the body is not as heavy as in the slow roast but not as light as in the fast roast.
there's a good intensity of flavor, goodbody good acidity, and the sweetness that iwant is there as well. the fourth cup is where i'm finding the best balance of all of these for a medium roast. it starts to smell like a dark roast at the 8th cup but starts to taste like a darkroast by the 7th. those two are very similar in the cupbut the eighth has more body and brings that darkroast flavor to the coffee in a way that is more complementary to theflavor than we have in the fourth cup.
beyond that point we're increasinglylosing the character of the coffee. i got a little bit lucky with the middlebatch finding coffees that match the flavor ofearlier lots but had this not been the case the threebatches provide a lot of information on what this coffee is capable of
and it would have been straightforwardto adjust how the coffee is roasted had i wanted something that wasn't quiterepresented here. as always, it's important to replicate the desired roasts in a test production batch and taste the coffee as a customer mightenjoy it.
