#49thparallelroasters

intro

I'd been meaning to place an order with 49th Parallel for quite a while. I've had nothing but good experiences with their coffees in shops - both their espressos and their brewed coffees. And, to be honest, I was dying to get one of their mugs, shown above, which is a lovely 50s-blue in real life.

In any case, the coffees I received were seriously impressive. I don't post about specific coffees as much as I used to simply because I notice a lot of flaws in brewing, roasting, and green coffee, and I'm not interested in ridiculing anyone's product. But these I'd love to talk about...

I ordered two coffees, a Cauca Colombia called Naranjos, that is 100% red bourbon, and their current edition of "Epic," a light-roasted SOE that's currently a washed Ethiopia Bulga. I went ahead and brewed both coffees in drip and espresso formats, since I think that a light roast espresso should function as drip and a properly-developed filter roast should function as espresso.

filter

Before I brewed these coffees, I cupped them, and some of the aromas from the Naranjos concerned me - savory, nutty, spicy (as in hot cayenne peppers). Fortunately, the brewed cup couldn't be any farther from that. As a V60, 204 F, 1:17, 1.31 TDS, 21.0 % extraction yield, it was pretty great, easily one of the best cups I'd had in weeks. Aromatics were orange blossom, cherry, lime, and tangerine; in the mouth, flavors were watermelon, more orange blossom and orange-ade, maraschino cherry, and graham cracker. It was an ultra-sweet, delicate, immaculately clean and non-roasty cup. On another brew, I did notice a hint of those off flavors from the cupping, but they weren't prominent. 

The question is, how much nutty-savory-garbanzo bean character makes a coffee underdeveloped? I suspect opinions differ. And I would say that, for my palate, some of the tastiest roasts I've had often hide a slight funkiness that can be revealed when they're pulled as espresso.

Brewing up V60's of both, the Bulga/Epic tended toward berry-tartaric flavors - red grape and blueberry, lots of juiciness, a bit of black tea, chocolate brownie, mandarin orange, and a hint of jasmine. Using the same parameters as with the Naranjos, it extracted to 22.7% EY - impressively soluble. Most coffees start falling apart around 21.5-22% on my V60, and yet this tasted clean at 22.7%. So do other coffees have scorching or underdevelopment that high EYs exposes? A question for another day...

espresso

I first pulled the Epic as espresso a mere three days off roast. I tended toward just longer than 2:1 water to coffee and found a really pleasant espresso that mirrored the brewed cup nicely. Aromatics were lemon peel, vanilla cream, brown sugar, and maraschino cherry. I had no trouble extracting >21% EY, 9-10 TDS with 22-26s EK shots at 7.5-8 bars at the grouphead. Considering that Epic is thought of as a "difficult" espresso, I found it really well-behaved and soluble. And I found its present-but-not-overwhelming acidity well-balanced by its serious sweetness. 

Naranjos wasn't quite ideal as espresso but still performed pretty admirably for a coffee that was probably dropped well before the end of first crack. I preferred it around 35% brew ratios (17.0 g in a VST 18 basket, 49 g out, 22-24 seconds). I wound up with over 21% EY with these parameters and notes of honeydew, kiwi, guava, orange juice, and cherry - really sweet and clean, and quite a bit more oriented toward tropical fruit than the brewed cup. There was a hint of unripe fruit character but nothing substantially off.

end

Anyway, these were pretty great.