This week’s coffee comes from George Howell Coffee. Like many others who studied art history and modern European literature at Yale, George Howell became a barista. He also built a chain of coffee shops in the Boston area that he eventually sold to Starbucks in 1994.
El Injerto La Calaca is a Gesha Green Tip from Guatemala. A four ounce bag costs $74 so the beans for each 10 ounce cup of coffee I make cost $18.50. I only drink coffee that costs at least $10 an ounce, so this is nearly twice as qualified (a Tony Guoga joke).
El Injerto La Calaca bag, front
El Injerto La Calaca bag, back
The beans were roasted on February 3, which means they’ve been “resting” for a little less than two weeks — this is perfect. You can expand the photos to read the blurbs on the bags if you wish.
One ounce of El Injerto La Calaca whole beans
The whole beans are interesting because I see no “chaff” … I don’t know the term for that flimsy layer you often find in the center of coffee beans. Could these beans have been handled one by one? Makes sense at $18.50 an ounce.
The beans are not difficult to grind unlike the Panamian Geshas I’ve had, which makes me wonder. The aroma is much more coffee-like too, not fruity bombs like the Panamanians. There is fruit on the nose, but this is “earthier.”
Into the sifter
I grind 28 grams of beans and sift out around eight grams of fines so that I have 20 grams of perfectly consistent grind in the end. I don’t throw out the fines of course, I just set them aside.
Zero chaff!
I’m using my standard 15:1 water to coffee recipe with 200-degree Fahrenheit water and an initial “bloom” pour of 50 ml to 30 seconds. Of course I use a hand-blown Chemex because it costs three times as much, which means it’s three times as good. It’s also important that you pronounce Chemex, “sha-may.”
Bloom pour
Second pour to 150 ml which drains to around the 1:30 mark
It’s a darker color… of course it all depends on my camera settings.
Final pour to 300 ml which drains between 2:30 and 3:00. This one finished right at the three minute mark. The beauty of having perfectly consistent grind is that your brew times are also perfectly consistent. You will never achieve this level of accuracy without sifting: Do you even sift, bro?
Here’s the final 10 ounce cup. The best word I’ve found to describe the Geshas I’ve had is "delicate,” like green tea, not coffee, but this cup is much more coffee-like on the tongue. It’s good, the “acidity” is very present, a little less complex than the Panamians for sure, but still complex.
“Notes of rose, jasmine and cherry.” Nope, nope and nope. But it is a complex sour. (This joke will never grow old.) I definitely prefer the Finca Nuguo and Finca La Mula to this, not that this is bad by any means, it’s just a personal preference.
I’ll have another cup tomorrow and then give away the rest of the bag since I’m not really into coffee.
There’s some more coffee on the way, so I’ll have a different cup next week to write about. But I’m not really looking forward to it since I don’t enjoy the taste of coffee. :-)
