Coffee is a fruit. The coffee bean is a seed. We spend so much time thinking of coffee as a beverage that it’s good to remind ourselves of the basics from time to time. I was once at a cupping where I overheard a fellow participant say, “I don’t think coffee should taste like fruit!” I remember being so shocked by this comment that I initially assumed it was a joke. But he wasn’t joking. I have no beef with a strong opinion, but this seemed to me like the equivalent of a bartender saying “I don’t think gin should taste like juniper!” or a chef saying “I don’t think bacon should taste like fat!” A good coffee may or may not remind me of fruit,...
Traditional Colombian coffee bags at Banexport's dry mill in Pitalito, Huila Department, Colombia In June I was fortunate enough to travel to Colombia with a handful of other roasters to source some beautiful microlots for our shops. As with my trip to Guatemala, my goals were to develop relationships with just a couple of producers that we could work with year after year. And, as with my trip to Guatemala, I ended up developing more than just a couple of relationships with spectacular producers and buying way more coffee than I originally intended! I get so excited about the coffees I’ve discovered on my trips, the farmers I meet, and their farms I’ve visited, that I ultimately end up wanting to...
One of the best ways to really get to know a coffee is to manually brew a single cup by itself. Pour overs are a great way to do this. We have always offered manual brew options, with the pour over made in a Hario V60 being the main method. Recently, we switched to serving the Kalita Wave as our primary manual brew option in all three of our shops. While we still like the clarity of a cup of coffee that the V60 brews, we have fallen in love with the thick body the Wave produces. Brewing a V60 The Hario V60 gives you a nice clean cup of coffee. When brewed properly, you get the delicate flavor profile that has...
Perhaps you remember way back when in November of 2011 when we released the coffees of the Manzano Project. These 3 lots of coffees were all from Finca El Manzano, El Salvador, all 100% Bourbon, but processed in 3 different ways: wet (or washed), natural (or dry), and honey (or pulped natural). We served all three as an espresso flight or an aeropress flight. Wet processing is the typical method employed by the Latin American coffee producing countries where the fruit of the coffee cherry is removed and the coffee is washed of its pulp before drying on the patio. Natural processed coffee is a method where the coffee cherry is left whole and set out to dry before the...
"Coffee is a blend of the work the barista does, the roasting, and the work in the field," says Oscar Mancilla. "Everything has to be well aligned to get a great cup, and you can have the best coffee in hand but it often comes down to what you get in the bar." A dedicated specialty coffee drinker who first dove into the multi-faceted world of craft beverages in his home country of Mexico, under the expert hands of Alberto Song Trujillo and his team at Caffe Sospeso in Tijuana, Oscar is a regular at Case Study Coffee. Oscar and his wife moved to Portland to work in the engineering industry; Oscar is an electromechanical engineer, while his wife works with the supply chain...
