If you read my other coffee blog, in which I post about the coffee roasting I'm doing for myself, you can probably guess why it's been six months between entries over here. But I finally caught up AND got a little tired of home roasting for a bit, so let's come back over here for a change. For my Maryland entry, there were more than a few options, but when I lived in Kansas City I used to go to the Messenger cafe in downtown KCMO and at one time they had a champion barista there who I met once when she was doing a pour-over demonstration at the cafe's slow bar. She later moved on from Messenger... and moved to Maryland, where she joined Ceremony Coffee. So if it was good enough for her - and that slow bar demonstration was awesome - it's good enough for me.
State #21: Maryland
Ceremony Coffee Roasters
Annapolis, MD
I decided to go with a couple of less usual origins. When you're searching through roasters for a project like this, it's very easy to find places doing Ethiopian, Colombian, Costa Rican. I do love Ethiopian coffee (you'd be a fool not to) but the latter two don't rate all that highly for me, strangely enough. I'm not sure why, and certainly I have had great coffees from both, but in any event they don't tend to ping my excitement meter in the same way as slightly rarer origins.
I opened the Mexican batch first. The tasting notes promised by the bag certainly sounded good, and I would say they were more or less on the money; the acidity made me think more of dried fruits like raisins, but that's not a million miles from the flavor of a date. There was a little bitterness behind that at first, but the cup smoothed out into a richer chocolate and some pecan nuttiness. Overall I thought it was a very good cup and so rated it an 8.
Congolese coffee is a bit like Yemeni coffee for me - it's pretty much all grown in the Lake Kivu area, which just so happens to be the most unstable part of the country. The fact that you can get anything out of an area like that is impressive, and I like to try and support producers in those areas if I can. It also doesn't come up that often, for obvious reasons, and so when I see it I will often buy it. Also, the coffee areas of DRC are very close, and thus fairly similar to in terms of terroir, Rwanda and Burundi, which are two of my favorite origins period. As those usually are (always, in the case of Burundi), this was a Bourbon batch, and it sure was good. It started with a somewhat conventional lemon acidity, but there was a surprisingly creamy body behind that with a lot of flavors going on - spiced chocolate, apple, and even some florality (perhaps that's the orange blossom Ceremony's tasters detected). Although I'm not sure we totally agreed about what this coffee tasted like, we clearly both liked it - I rated it a 9, Great.
With 17 total points, Ceremony pulls into a tie for third place, a very solid performance. Next up is Massachusetts, the kind of state that seems like it should have a lot of hip little roasters. Let's see if I can pick out a good one.
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