Description
BCT’s coffee special includes three of our best dark roast coffees. Featuring our:
Tanzania BCT Select Peaberry is sourced from a group of 235 family-owned farms located in the Mbozi district within the Songwe region of Tanzania. Producers harvest and deliver cherry to a centralized processing station where the coffee is depulped, fermented, washed and dried. The aggregate processing stations have been established in the last three years to provide producers with a centrally located processing facility that can process coffee more consistently and ensure better quality, which results in better prices from the international market.
Tasting Notes: Rich and chocolaty, Tanz coffee is always high on our go to list for stronger chocolaty darker roast coffee. At the medium roasts one will see a more gentle cup with good body, a little sweeter edge, hints of acidity and stronger chocolaty spice. Darker roasts get much fuller bodied and bring out the very strong bakers chocolate edge balancing nicely with classic African spice note and complimenting roasty/smoky tones. Lighter roasts will show crisp lemony acidity with more of a caramel/chocolate spin but can be pretty sharp.
Roasting Notes: Medium to dark roasts are preferred and let the cup shine. Light roasts risk a little earthy tone that will blossom into more spicy chocolate factor darker roasted. We found a quicker roast accentuates some of the sweeter tone and crispness which was a good thing.
Congo Org. Kivu – Virunga Coffee – Mukwinja Station – Washed
This organic fully washed is from Mukwinja washing station in South Kivu, one of 8 such stations operated by Virunga Coffee Company, set up by Schluter Ltd. (now Covoya Europe) in 2012 to produce specialty coffees in eastern DRC and improve livelihoods for smallholder farmers in the region. Mukwinja works with 699 farmers in South Kivu, who cultivate at altitudes between 1,500 and 2,500masl.
Despite the high potential of the coffees around Mukwinja, smallholder production is characterized by a very small farm size, lack of infrastructure for coffee processing and lack of access to high-quality markets. Virunga Coffee is providing technical assistance to coffee farmers on regenerative agriculture practices, as well as access to coffee inputs, namely high-quality coffee seedlings to increase farming productivity, and thus profitability. Our goal is to increase economic opportunities from coffee farming in South Kivu.
A super clean lot from the Congo – amazing considering all the trouble this year in the Kivu – beautiful prep on these beans. Great floral and soft fruit tones upfront with a bit of brightness balanced with a tea spiced chocolaty factor, not too overwhelming or potent like some Africans. Smooth with almost a brown sugar hint at a strong medium roast. Pretty much everyone will love this coffee, a great everyday drinker.
Roasting Notes:
Easy to roast and tasty at most roast levels. Lots of small little hints that get burned out into 2nd crack make this tailored toward lighter roasting, but tastes great as you push it towards or into 2nd crack. A strong medium roast was our favorite, just starts popping out that caramelized tone without burning out complimentary floral/fruit tones.
Indonesian Sumatra Gr. 1 – Mandheling
“Mandheling” is one of the broadest coffee trading terms for a regional blend in Indonesia, applying to almost any blend of wet-hulled coffees from across the northern half of the island of Sumatra that suit a generic cup profile that is heavy on the palate, earthy in balance, and complex. Regional coffee blend distinctions in the northern provinces of Sumatra were originally based on human ethnicity, rather than geography: Mandheling is a widespread cultural group found across Sumatra and Malaysia; “Batak”, to use another example, is a Mandheling sub-ethnicity based around Lake Toba and considered a smaller regional coffee pedigree unto itself, and often marketed as such.
The large majority of coffee blends labeled “Mandheling” tend to be drawn from across a variety of local parchment collectors across two main coffee producing provinces, both of which are fortified with volcanic soils: Aceh and North Sumatra. Aceh province (pronounced AH-CHEY) is the northernmost province of Sumatra and 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. North Sumatra province, just below Aceh, is a varied territory with high elevation grasslands, mountain ranges, and the massive Lake Toba, another of the island’s most famous coffee producing areas.
Tasting Notes: A very clean traditional Sumatra cup. Best from medium to dark roasts. Fuller bodied with some nice exotic incense spice notes intermingled with a bakers chocolate and smoky cup profile. Light roast are not recommended (for almost all Indo coffees). Medium roasts were nice and balanced, a little lemony acidity upfront mixing with a bunch of spice and hints of an earthy slightly peaty chocolaty factor; a decent roast point for pour-overs or drip. Darker roasts were fuller bodied and very smoky with the spice lingering in the aftertaste, very low acidity; good for dark roast fans, espresso or blend bases.
Roasting Notes: A nice screen for a Sumatra makes it a bit easier to roast then many Sumatra beans. Low in chaff due to the processing (wet-hulled). A longer setup is nice for this cup, gives much more rounded edges and smooth characteristics. Very light roasts are to be avoided, a medium to dark roast matches the cup profile very nicely.
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 tend to average 0.5-2 hectares each. Every coffee village has a collector (or more) who receives fresh-picked cherry, or humid parchment, for processing each day. Once a batch of coffee has been depulped, fermented overnight, washed clean, and then quickly sun-dried to the touch, each collector then delivers the batch to a central miller. 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.
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