For Christmas, my dad bought me my own coffee roaster - more on that at my other coffee blog - and so this project took somewhat of a back seat as I was ordering green coffee, and roasting it myself, instead of pre-roasted coffee. But then I moved back to the Chicago area and my ability to do my own roasting was curtailed somewhat, and I found myself running short on inventory. What better time to get back on the horse? Iowa isn't a state that has a huge number of roasters, or at least not a huge number of roasters that produce and promote specialty coffee in the specific way that I find appealing. It's easy to find coffee roasters in any state, but finding ones that will give you detailed origin information is sometimes more of a challenge. Fortunately, there were at least a few to pick from.
State #16: Iowa
Lightbrite Coffee Roasters
Grimes, IA
Peru has tended to be my favorite South American origin - perhaps my favorite Western Hemisphere origin entirely. This was interesting and somewhat different from what I'm used to getting from that country - I've had very sweet coffees from Peru, and there was definitely chocolate and a juicy fruit note in the back of the profile, but the lead here was a lot drier. I always mentally roll my eyes a little when a roaster presents a tasting note that I don't think is super helpful to the average person, and "mulberry" kind of felt like that here - have you ever eaten a mulberry, that you know of? - but after actually drinking the coffee I have to take it back. I don't specifically know what a mulberry tastes like, or at least I don't have a specific taste memory of it, but there is definitely a certain acidity to this coffee that makes me think of when you're a kid and you try taking a small bite of some random tree fruit in your neighborhood. Those things tend to have that kind of astringent kick to them - think crab apple, since that's the one of these that is probably most common, but a little more like a berry, and that is what I was getting here. So, bang on, I think. Now, does that make for my absolute favorite coffee, well, maybe not as much. There's an interesting mix of varietals in this one - Caturra (a natural Bourbon mutation), Pache (a natural Typica mutation), and Catimor (Caturra crossed with the Timor Hybrid that has Robusta genetics) - and I think you're getting something from all three. This is a gross generalization, but Bourbon varietals tend to favor fruitiness, Typica varietals tend to favor chocolate notes, and then Robusta-derived hybrids tend to taste flat. (None of those statements are always true by any means, but from a tendency standpoint that's my easy way to separate things based on what I've encountered so far.) This is a coffee that has some fruit notes, some chocolate notes, and then a little bit of a wall beyond which I'm just not getting the deeper flavor I like to look for in the best coffees. As usual, it's perfectly drinkable and makes for a totally solid morning, and it's actually an interesting contrast - once the drier, tannic lead fades a bit (or you get used to it, whichever it is) there's a surprisingly juicy body hiding behind it. The amount of flavor in that body is a shade disappointing, though. On the whole, I rated this coffee a 7, Good.
Ordering an Ethiopian coffee as one of the two is almost unfair, because I don't often rate Ethiopians lower than 8, but I couldn't pass up a washed Yirgacheffe. But this wasn't quite the experience I was expecting. One thing that I noticed when I weighed out the beans for the first brew of this morning was that they looked light. And I mean light. Having now had a decent amount of experience doing my own roasting, this was a look that you don't often see from professional roasters, which is to say that the roast barely looked finished. I'm sure it varies based on equipment but I feel like truly light roasts are hard to achieve - once the beans have started first crack, you're already pushing medium-light, and if you stop before that then the beans risk being underdeveloped. For me, this batch fell right on that cusp. It's an Ethiopian coffee, after all, so there should be plenty of good flavors you can work with. The acidity made me think of a tangerine, as mentioned on the bag, and there was definitely a floral component that lines up with the jasmine they identified. Beyond that, though, I wasn't really blown away. In my early days of roasting I was always worried about overdoing it and didn't know how audible first crack would be, and I underroasted a couple batches by stopping them too early. The resulting coffee was drinkable but distinctly flat, with the flavors just not having developed all the way. That was sort of the feeling I got here - this isn't some terrible coffee and there's decent fruitiness on the palate, but I couldn't shake the sensation that it didn't quite get finished. I doubt professional roasters would have stopped a roast before first crack the way I accidentally did, but this had to have been stopped as early as possible. I feel like it needed another minute. I still rated this a 7, Good, because it's hard to really ruin inputs like this (unless you way over-roast them), but I wanted more.
The total score for Lightbrite was 14, right in the middle so far. Not superlative, but not terrible. Seems like a good summation of how it went. Next up... why, it's Kansas, the state I just moved away from a few months ago! This is actually going to be a little tricky because I've had PT's Coffee earmarked forever... but by my own standard of not revisiting roasters, can I get away with ordering from them? I've never bought beans from them, so I think it counts. And also these rules are completely made up and not actually enforced by anyone. So I'm probably going with them. Stay tuned.
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