This was the first state since Colorado where the choice was a bit more difficult. Florida has a lot of options and in a vacuum you would think that maybe I would have gone with something from one of the larger cities, perhaps Miami with its Cuban influences... but after doing some searching, I ended up all the way up in the panhandle instead. It worked out quite well.
State #10: Florida
Amavida Coffee Roasters
Santa Rosa Beach, FL
As I said in the last post, I've really been into East African coffee lately, and after a particularly good Burundi experience from Verve back in May, I was ready to try that origin again. Once again it worked out quite well. The washed red Bourbon coffee had an appealing sweet-tart acidity on the front end, reminiscent of stone fruit, leading into a nice medium body with a good mixture of spice and sweet notes. I rated it a 9, Great. It was fairly similar to how I found the last Burundian coffee and that isn't super surprising - they came from adjoining provinces in the north of the country (and it's not a big country), and Burundi mandates all coffee be red Bourbon. So you've got essentially identical inputs and a very similar terroir - no shock that the coffees are similar. But why should that concern me when the product is so excellent? I suppose you could argue that it's somewhat unfair to other roasters from a ratings standpoint - note that all three roasters to have put up a combined top score so far had either a Rwandan or Burundian coffee in the order - and you could probably also argue that the inputs were far more important to the quality than anything the roaster did (though I imagine you could pretty much always make that case - anyway, roasters still have to choose the beans they're going to roast, so they must deserve at least some credit, even beyond the roasting itself, for what they're offering). With all that said, I have to rate off my experiences. The farmers and managers in country surely deserve the most credit for Burundian coffee being a superior product, but Amavida also gets credit for obtaining, roasting, and offering a superior product.
I was very interested to try this coffee because Papua New Guinean coffees often more resemble Indonesian coffees - earthy flavors, heavier roasts. This wasn't that - the roast was roughly medium-light and the flavors on show were more sweet and fragrant, with a lemony acidity and dried fruit notes like raisin. The body was leaning toward the syrupy side, but not aggressively so. I thought there was a chance we could have our first combined rating of 18, but I picked up some grassy notes that just held this one down to an 8, Very Good, for me. Still, at a combined rating of 17, Amavida is as good as we've seen so far. It's also good that I ordered this when I did because the Baroida Estate coffee vanished off their site not long after it arrived - I must have gotten one of the very last bags of it!
The next state is going to be interesting because I picked a roaster from Georgia that sells coffee only grown on their family farms and partner farms in Honduras. I had a fairly good experience with Honduran coffee from Verve, so we'll see if that continues. And then after that it's on to Hawaii, which I'm intrigued to revisit as an origin. Fun next few weeks in store!
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