Of course, the District of Columbia is not a state - not yet, anyway. But it should be, and anyway it's distinct enough to be worthy of separate inclusion on this list. Plus it definitely had several roasters to choose from! I ended up going with Lost Sock Roasters, a small-batch roastery located in the Brightwood Park neighborhood.
"State" #9: District of Columbia
Lost Sock Roasters
Washington, DC
I hadn't had Salvadoran coffee for a while - not since November, according to my records. Like the last one, this one was also a red honey process. (I'm sure I've discussed it before, but real quick: the processing type known as "honey" is essentially a halfway point between fully washed coffee and natural processing, in which the beans are dried in the mucilage but not in the whole fruit. The different colors used in naming honey processing - red, yellow, black - have to do with how much mucilage remains on the beans and how long the drying process lasts.) I appreciate honey process coffees for having fruity notes without necessarily being overwhelmingly fruity in a way that can completely overtake the flavors of the beans themselves, which can happen in natural processing. (A lot of natural-process coffees taste pretty much the same to me, although that's been changing a bit lately, possibly as I get more educated and more used to drinking specialty.) That was definitely the case here - I detected a grape acidity and a mild fruitiness in the cup, along with some floral notes. It was a balanced and drinkable cup of coffee, though I wouldn't have minded seeing some more complexity in the flavor profile. I ultimately decided to rate this a 7, or Good.
When I first started getting into specialty, I didn't think I really liked Ethiopian coffee - indeed, I didn't think I liked African coffees that much in general; I believed my personal preference was for Indonesian coffees. Well, it's not even two years later and I've gone completely around on this. African coffees - specifically, East African coffees from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi - are almost certainly my favorite origin at the moment. Or more to the point, if you asked me to pick one coffee from a roaster I was most sure I was going to love, it would likely be from one of those origins. I also just finished reading the book Where the Wild Coffee Grows by Jeff Koehler, which talks about the history of coffee and its origins in the forests of southwestern Ethiopia; if you're interested enough in coffee to be reading this stupid blog, I would recommend it. One interesting thing I took from the book is that the genetic diversity in most coffee grown around the world is fairly low, which is one reason why diseases like coffee rust are such a problem. Back in the period when coffee was first discovered by Europeans and moved around the globe, they didn't think much about such things and just tried to take the best example of a species and propagate it. Flavor profiles are reliant on multiple factors, but if you start with the same handful of inputs it likely cuts the range down somewhat. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia where heirloom varieties are grown, you have a much higher genetic diversity. In addition to helping guard against disease, this also generates a wider range of possible flavor profiles. This one, fascinatingly, tasted like a cup of tea with honey in it! The honey was prominent in the nose as well, and honestly the cup tasted and smelled so much like honey that if I hadn't ground and brewed it myself I'm not sure you could have convinced me that there wasn't actual honey in there. The body was nice and drinkable as well. I did find the acidity of the cup to be a little indistinct - it was clearly there, but I couldn't pin it down in any satisfying way - but overall this was an enjoyable experience and I rated it an 8, Very Good.
The combined score of 15 for the two coffees moves Lost Sock into third place on the list so far, so I'm definitely glad I decided to try DC even if it's not currently a state. Coming up next we dive back into the actual 50 states with Florida, one of just five states I have never actually set foot in (but the second one already in this project, after Alaska).
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