3 lb Bundle: Dark

Description

BCT’s coffee special includes three of our best dark roast coffees. Featuring our:

Indian Mysore Nuggets – Extra Bold

Year in to year out, this is always one of our most popular coffees, at times we have trouble keeping it in stock!

Mysore coffees are the best known and the most popular of all Indian coffees, they possess good body and snappy acidity. The overall taste profile is very unique, with spicy overtones. These spicy overtones come from the cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves and pepper that grow alongside the coffee trees.

India Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold is sourced from several family-owned farms from the Chikmagalur District in Karnataka, India. Many of the farms have been in operation for close to one hundred years, passed down through the family from one generation to the next. Our Mysore Extra Bold is a fully washed coffee cultivated above 1,200 meters.

This lot is full bodied, with a rich full taste and moderate acidity. Very interesting and exotic, I like to roast this coffee a little darker, just into the second crack.

Tasting Notes:
Indian Mysore Nuggets has been a favorite of Burman Coffee and customers for many years and this crop does not disappoint. The aroma is nutty, woody, and some slight smokiness. Many of the notes in the aroma come through in the flavor like walnuts and some smoke. There’s dark fruit, oak, licorice, and some vanilla spice, like a good dry red wine. The finish has a subdued brightness to it with just hints of lemon zest at lighter roast points. The body is medium to full depending on roast and brew. There’s a reason people keep coming back to this bean. It’s a smooth all around great stronger cup of coffee.

Roasting Notes:
We recommend roasting this bean a bit darker, strong medium to traditional dark roasts. Too light and the brightness is too dominant and the boldness not developed enough.

Regional Details

If you think coffee from India sounds uncommon, wait until you hear about the Western Ghats mountain range where this coffee was cultivated.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most biologically diverse places in the world with more than 5,000 species of flowering plants and 508 different species of birds.  The Neelakurinji flower is so uncommon that  it only blooms every twelve years.  And the legends say that the Western Ghats mountain range is the location where the first cultivated coffee in India arrived, from seven raw beans brought from Mocha by a Sufi saint on a pilgrimage to Mecca in the 17th century.

Sourcing Details

This lot comes from an estate in the Somwarpet region, which has 330 acres cultivated with coffee, oranges and peppers.  The estate has its own mill where coffee cherries are sorted, depulped, fermented, washed and then dried on patios.

Peru Cajamarca Org. El Chaupe SHB EP

Peru’s northern Andes are lush, humid, mountainous, and a kind of visceral threshold between the drier Pacific slopes and the cavernous and rainforested lowlands of the Amazon basin on the eastern side. The highlands here are broad and varied in elevation and microclimate. Coffee has had a dominant presence here for decades and the northern departments of Cajamarca, Amazonas, and Piura are well-established in the marketplace for their certified cooperatives representing tens of thousands of smallholder farmers, as well as the high-quality potential throughout the region.

In Peru by far the bulk of coffee production comes from small farms owned and managed by people who have for many years followed organic farm management practice attuned to their cultural connection with the land. Producers, like the ones included in this lot, typically cultivate coffee on just a few acres of land intercropped with shade trees, fruits and vegetables. Small producers are often very careful about picking and sorting their cherry prior to depulping, fermenting, washing, and drying the coffee, all on personal equipment and on personal property. While producers design farm management and post-harvest solutions to fit their varying needs, they also need a strong business alliance to bring their coffee to the international market and earn fair prices, regardless of whether the coffees are blended or sold independently.

Tasting Notes: A fresh arrival great from a medium to dark roast. A good daily drinker. Medium to low acidity, the cup does have some jazzy more floral tones at the lighter roast points, but too light & it will be on the nutty/grassy side of things. Takes a little fuller roast to see the chocolaty side blossom. Medium roasts and beyond produce a smooth and rich cup, more chocolaty than nutty, pulls a dryer peanut brittle like tone (some may say hint of caramel), more peanut than brittle but we all thought it to be a good descriptor. Dark roasts turns the cup pretty chocolaty, retains the sweet edge and a couple tasters even noticed a little floral hint to it.

Roasting Notes: Medium to dark roasts are the way to go. A nice medium roast makes for an excellent daily drinker, smooth, sweet and balanced. Darker roasts work well if you need a little heft in the cup. Medium chaff and will roast slightly two toned. An unscreened offering, one will see smaller beans and larger beans roasting slightly different from each other but easy to hit medium to dark roast levels.

Perales Huancaruna (PERHUSA) is a cooperative in northern Peru that manages coffee from farmer associates throughout the region. This specific lot comes to us from a combination of small family-run farms in the Chaupe municipality, near the city of San Ignacio, close to the Ecuadorian border. During harvest the farms have minimal, if any, hired labor to assist with picking and land management, all of which is carefully and entirely done by hand. Once picked, coffee is mechanically depulped using a small machine, fermented in an above-ground tank for 24-36 hours, manually scrubbed clean using fresh water, and then dried for about 10 days on small patios, and occasionally raised screen beds. Finally, fully dried parchment is delivered to one of PERHUSA’s local warehouses for safekeeping and conditioning. From there deliveries are sampled and consolidated by PERHUSA’s quality team or kept separate for traceability or quality reasons.

Indonesian Sumatra Org. Takengon – KPGLA Gayo Mandheling Gr. 1 – Wet Hulled

Aceh (pronounced AH-CHEY) is the northernmost province of Sumatra. Its highland territory, surrounding Lake Tawar and the central city of Takengon, is considered to be the epicenter of one of the world’s most unique coffee terroirs. Coffee farms in this area are managed with the experience of many generations of cultivation, while also harmoniously woven into their surrounding tropical forests. The canopies are loud and fields are almost impenetrably thick with coffee plants, fruit trees, and vegetables, all of which are constantly flushing with new growth. Year-round mists and rain showers never cease, farm floors are spongy and deep with layered biomass, and almost every square meter of the region seems to exude life. Nothing is ever still. Including coffee ripening, which occurs ten months out of the year.  

Farmers in this group are organized around the Gayo Lauser Antara cooperative (shortened to KPGLA), which was first established in 2013. KPGLA is located, along with its grower members, in the Jagong Jeget district, on the western end of the Aceh Tengah regency, one of Aceh’s most prolific coffee producing areas. Collectively the cooperative’s members control 770 hectares of farmland.   

Tasting Notes:
A very nice fresh crop arrival. Full bodied with a creamy mouthfeel, low acidity and spot on tastes from a traditional Mandheling Sumatra; peat moss, smoky, chocolaty, fuller bodied and strong. A clean enough cup to get a decent medium roast, gives a smoother mouthfeel and has a bit of sweetness upfront, darker roasts will turn thicker but also edgier and promote the smokier semi-sweet side of the profile.

Roasting Notes: 
As with most Sumatra coffees, the processing promotes a couple different shades in the roaster. It is normal to see some beans lighter than others. Make sure if shooting for the medium roasts, that you judge it from the lighter looking beans, important to get them all through first crack. When roasting darker, judge it by the darker looking beans for if they get too dark or burn, gets a little ashy tone in the cup.

Sumatra’s smallholder coffee is a complicated process. Notably, processing is typically not overseen by a single individual or team; instead, coffee moves task by task through different parties before reaching its final, fully-dried, state. Coffee farms in Aceh Tengah average 0.5-2 hectares each. Every village with cooperative members has a collector (or more) who receives fresh-picked cherry for washed processing each day. Once a batch of coffee has been depulped, fermented overnight, washed clean, and then sun-dried to the touch, each collector then delivers the batch to the cooperative’s central mill. It is at the mill where the coffee is mechanically hulled of its parchment, leaving behind just the soft, high-moisture coffee bean (thus earning the term “wet-hulled”), all of which is spread out on large patios to continue drying. Each handoff is orchestrated by the cooperative, and the members’ coffee is traced throughout each step of the chain. 

KPGLA, along with many local industries in the region, identifies itself as “Gayo”, after the Gayonese ethnic group which has long made Aceh their home, and which comprises a vast majority of farmer members. Regional coffee distinctions in the northern provinces of Sumatra are interestingly all based on human ethnicity, rather than geography itself, which unfortunately has muddled the island’s traceability over time. “Mandheling” for example, is a broad label for a widespread cultural group in Sumatra and Malaysia and subsequently the broadest coffee trading term, applying to almost any chosen blend of wet-hulled coffees from across the northern half of the island. These terms are malleable, and it is often difficult to pinpoint a coffee’s exact origin without direct partnerships that allow buyers to trace the entire value chain themselves. So, it is helpful to work with exporters with a local supply chain, who themselves operate in the highlands and are personally invested in their community’s success. KPGLA regularly distributes farming tools and cash dividends to cooperative members, as well as school supplies for families with schoolchildren.