In setting up to try coffee roasted in all fifty states, there were many ways I could theoretically have gone - east to west, west to east, starting at my location in the center and working outward - but the simplest was alphabetical order. And that means starting with Alabama. I've actually had coffee roasted in Alabama before - for a while when I was first getting really into specialty coffee I was using the middleman website Trade to order from various roasters around the country, and the first one I purchased came from Revelator, based out of Birmingham. For this project I didn't want to duplicate my previous efforts, so I started by Googling "Alabama coffee roasters" and seeing which websites piqued my interest. After looking at a few different ones, I hit on Prevail, who actually don't show up until the third page of results!
State #1: Alabama
Prevail Coffee Roasters
Auburn/Montgomery (?), AL
I include the question mark because it's actually not entirely clear to me where Prevail is technically based. They have an affiliated cafe in Montgomery, and used to have one in Auburn, but on Google Maps the Montgomery-based "HQ and roastery" is listed as "permanently closed," though that could simply mean it's not open to the public. The 2018 Food & Wine article that named Prevail the best coffee in Alabama appears to name Auburn as the home base for the roastery itself. In any event, they are definitely located in the state of Alabama, so for the purposes of this project it's all good!
When I initially conceived of this idea, I thought it would be interesting to try and do it as something like 52 coffees in 52 weeks, if you include DC and then maybe Puerto Rico. But that was always sort of impractical, and anyway ordering coffee from all over the country is already less cost-effective because of shipping - ordering a single bag only made that aspect of it worse. Besides, can you get a full sense of what a roaster is like by trying a single coffee of theirs? So I ordered two bags from Prevail, and that will probably be the usual amount going forward.
Coffee #1: Costa Rica
This was a honey processed coffee from Finca Sircof, located in Costa Rica's central valley northwest of the capital San Jose. If you are unfamiliar with the different types of coffee processing, there are basically three main ways to process the seed of the coffee cherry, which involve different levels of removing the outer layers of the fruit. The most common processing method is washed (sometimes called "fully washed"), which basically means that everything is cleaned off the coffee bean before it is dried. Natural processing sees the bean dried inside of the coffee cherry, which tends to impart a lot more sweetness and fruitiness to the coffee. Splitting the difference is honey processing, where the fruit itself is removed, but the sticky outer layer of mucilage on the seed is not washed off prior to the drying process.
The varietal, Venecia, was also a new one to me. It's apparently a pretty new variety in general and possibly specific to Costa Rica - it seems to have been discovered there, in Alajuela Province northeast of San Jose, originating as a natural mutation of caturra coffee plants that were found to produce better yields.
Tasting notes tend to be extremely subjective, and as a relative novice I don't always per se agree with or distinguish a lot of what appears as suggested tasting notes on bags of coffee. But this one seemed spot on. The acidity in the cup had a definite grapefruit characteristic to it - that slightly heavier edge with a hint of bitterness which you'll recognize if you've ever had a glass of grapefruit juice. And underneath that was a distinct taste of raw nuts - "toasted nut" is a pretty common flavor in coffee because, after all, what is roasted coffee if not essentially a toasted nut, but the taste here was pretty specific in tasting like a raw almond or perhaps hazelnut. I don't know how much I tasted cane sugar, but two out of three is a good hit rate for thinking that the tasting notes really nailed it.
I tend to take my coffee black on the weekends, when I can make it either in the Chemex or as a single cup pour-over, and with an ounce of half and half during the week (when it's more convenient to make it in the Mr. Coffee). Some coffees I actually prefer black, while others work better with a little dairy to take the edge off. In the case of the Finca Sircof I think I liked it slightly better with the creamer - I like grapefruit, but when it comes to coffee I prefer either low acid or a brighter acidity. This one was a little heavier, and so cutting that slightly with a bit of cream was more appealing to me. But it was a solid start to the project.
Coffee #2: Papua New Guinea
I just tried this one this morning. The Sigri Estate is located in the Western Highlands province of Papua New Guinea, which is actually more in the center of the country (at least the portion of the country that is on the island of New Guinea itself). "Peaberry," if you're not familiar, is what happens when a single round seed forms on the inside of the coffee cherry, rather than two halves of a seed with the flattened edges. This is a relatively rare mutation, occurring roughly 5% of the time, and it tends to be more expensive because the only way to distinguish a peaberry is hand-sorting the beans after washing, a labor-intensive process.
I should note here that one thing I tend to prioritize when it comes to selecting coffee is provenance. I'm a huge nerd for specificity, as I think this project will make abundantly clear if it hasn't already, and so a listing of exactly where the coffee is from and details on its origin and processing are exactly what I'm looking for. As you can see, Prevail is pretty good about this - you get the name of the coffee estate, the process, the coffee variety, and even the growing altitude right on the bag. My only gripe would be that I couldn't see the roasting level anywhere. This isn't a huge deal when it comes to third-wave specialty coffee, though, because it is pretty rare that these coffees are roasted past medium. I would guess that the PNG was roasted to medium (Indonesian and Papuan coffees are frequently roasted darker because their earthier flavors can tolerate a heavier roast) and the Costa Rican was probably more like a medium-light.
In this case, the tasting notes didn't hit me quite as directly. There were definitely some earthier and spicier notes that I think line up closely enough with baking spice, but I'd be hard-pressed to say I definitely tasted anything like "red apple" or "graham cracker" in there. I've only had this once so far and haven't tried it with creamer at all, so it'll be interesting to see if there's any evolution on that front; I may come back and update this if anything different jumps out when I try it again. In any event, I certainly enjoyed drinking this coffee, so the fact that the tasting notes didn't perfectly mirror my own experience isn't terribly relevant to me.
So that's state #1 of the United States of Arabica. Next up will be Alaska, although I don't know exactly how long it will take me to get to that. I still have plenty of Prevail coffee to consume, and I just ordered a special "Nepal tasting series" from California's Saint Frank Coffee because I am an absolute sucker for super interesting origins. I might break in to do a review of the Nepali coffees on here, because why not? But the 50-state project will continue. Stay tuned.
Comments
Post a Comment