State #2: Alaska
Kaladi Brothers Coffee
Anchorage, AK
After some online research I opted to try Kaladi Brothers, which appears to be a not insignificant local chain - their website lists sixteen Alaskan locations plus one in downtown Seattle! You've gotta have some juice to be an outside coffee company that can set up shop in the heart of second-wave coffee country.
One thing I will say is that this feels a lot more like second-wave coffee to me than third-wave. Which isn't to say there's anything per se wrong with that, and Alaska wasn't really swimming in third-wave options. But the website does not specify roast levels, and the coffees came roasted about a full step darker than I was expecting. The Sumatran, which I tried first, was definitely a dark roast - you could see some of the oil on the outside of the beans, which I don't usually encounter. Maybe it could have been a Vienna roast, on the border of medium-dark and true dark, but that's still way darker than I usually like it. I do understand that Indonesian coffees often get roasted darker because they can tolerate it pretty well, and it's not like all the natural flavors were roasted out of the bean... but probably a lot of them were. When I drink a coffee like that, I mostly taste the roast, the taste that I think a lot of people associate with coffee. It's what you taste when you have most things at Starbucks, for example. As I said, second-wave. Is there anything really wrong with that? Not as such, I guess. And to some extent, part of the point of this project is to see what coffee is like all over the US. If everyone just imports from around the world and then roasts exactly the same way, why bother doing this, right? So what I learned here is that perhaps Alaskans like a darker roasted coffee - that rich, smoky taste to get you through the long, dark winters. Maybe? That would certainly add some local character to the story.
The Kenya Nguvu AA was definitely not roasted as dark as the Sumatran, but it still looked close to Full City. With that said, the flavors were not roasted out of it in the way they may have been with the Sumatran. I could definitely get the suggestion of ripe strawberry and some cola undertones, and there were not a lot of heavy roast flavors. The body was quite nice, with a drinkable character and a pop of acidity that added balance without being too sharp. I do find the wide variety of flavors that show up in light-roasted beans to be particularly interesting, but there was a particularly artisanal character to the way this was roasted just enough to highlight a couple distinct flavors while also leaving a smooth, easy to drink coffee that isn't too acidic. For as much as I was somewhat bummed out by how dark the Sumatran was roasted, this was quite pleasing. There are a number of other single origins on their website that I did not try, but if you want to taste some Alaskan coffee I can certainly say this one is a solid recommend.
It was cool to order Alaskan coffee once, although I'm not sure I would recommend it unless you have a particular affinity for the state or are a big nerd like I am. Not because there's anything wrong with the coffee but because, not surprisingly, it's really expensive to do so! The FedEx shipping cost more than half what the two bags of coffee cost, which just feels excessive. Fun to do once, but that's plenty. Onward to Arizona - I've got two 12 oz bags from Press Coffee ordered, and hopefully they will show up in the middle of next week. Right now the only coffee I've got in the house is several smaller bags from Paradise Coffee's rare coffee subscription, which will only last so long!
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