This week’s coffee is a washed Kona Typica from Lions Gate Farms in Hawaii. I am buying almost all of my coffee from Bean & Bean now since they deal in the best of the best and the young woman who runs the place is smart, hard-working, and responsive.
I paid $33 for 4 ounces, which works out to only $8.25 a cup (beans only). “Extra Fancy” is the Hawaiian Department of Agriculture term for this grade of coffee, I guess.
I forgot to get a picture of the roast date, but it was a Feb. 25 roast. This means that the coffee has been resting for about two weeks, which could be a perfect amount of time.
Haven’t had Kona coffee before, the whole beans have a distinctive fragrance which I can’t describe, fruity anyway … quite a bit of chaff after the grind. Lovely aroma… again, I have no words to describe it.
Do you even sift, bro? It’s extremely important that you sift out your fines when making pour over. The fines will muddy everything up and ruin your beautiful cup of coffee. Set them aside!
20 grams of perfectly consistent grind after sifting. The usual recipe, 15:1 … 200-degree Fahrenheit water, 50 ml and 30 seconds to bloom, second pour of 150 ml, final pour to 300 ml total. 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 of 50 ml.
Second pour of 100 ml to 150 ml total.
Final pour of 150 ml to 300 ml. Lovely color. Drained to drip at exactly the three minute mark.
Full-mouth acidity, not unpleasant, doesn’t linger overly … it’s clean, very nice. I wish I could describe the flavors and aromas better, but I’ll have to update the post later when I have a second and third and fourth cup. I think I’ll be able to identify Kona coffee on blind taste tests later since it is very distinctive. Jiyoon notes “brown sugar” which I think I can smell/taste in there.
Coffee from Hawaii is necessarily expensive because slave labor can’t be exploited to farm it. An 11 ounce bag of this costs $81 which, when you think about it, is probably the price you should pay for coffee from anywhere in the world.
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