Roast #37: Coffee Club V6
It's already time for V6????
Better late than never.
But damn — we’ve just surpassed the amount sold for V5. So, so, so much love to you all. 🙇
TLDR: Head here to buy V6
Some changes with this one:
There is no South Brooklyn pickup. I got too much going on this month, and I didn't think I could handle another popup. Side note: I'll be at Maum Market tabling on April 27th.
The pricing structure will stay the same.
USPS is now an available shipping method.
I have a limited amount of "test roast" (big discount) for sale on the shop.
I will likely do another public push with advertising. So if you can’t make this first roast pickup, there’ll likely be another one in 2-3 weeks (will note in shopify description / instagram). But also, I do ad-hoc custom pickup, so if you can’t make a pickup date, I’ll work with you to figure a date out.
Presales:
V6 will be the last time you can buy ad-hoc orders with presale pricing. In the future, I will move the discounts to those with a subscription. For those of you who consistently buy presale, it'll be easier for you since we'll carry your order every 2 months.
You will be able to cancel the subscription whenever. The point of setting up a subscription won't be to trap you into buying; it's more for me to forecast and feel less anxious when putting down close to $2.5K on coffee greens for each coffee club. I'm willing to take less per order if I know, with certainty, that I'm going to sell out. Right now, I'm unsure if I'm going to make back my money, or end up at a loss.
As of today (04/16), I'm still about $500 in the red. I'm hoping that with the popup coming up and a more public release, I'll be able to break even. But $500 is still a lot of coffee to sell.
Test roast:
This is something that I'm introducing to help decrease my costs.
Someone suggested I do what Scott Rao does with Prodigal and their "First Batch 1 Kilo" to help decrease costs.
This "test roast" offering will be the result of me running my intended roast strategy on the big machine (IR-5).
Moving a profile from one roaster to another isn't always clear-cut, and roast behavior (and results) will likely differ a bit. This first roast is usually where we confirm what settings we should tune to determine how we want to run our production roasts on the IR-5.
For V5, I just tossed the first batches out. But my friend who suggested this also mentioned that this first "test" roast likely is still better than what most grocery stores carry, so packaging this roast at a massive discount would still help me recoup some money, as the greens are expensive.
Pricing:
We did some price discovery in V5; technically, I could price up a bit. But there's not a huge need to (yet). So, I'm going with the same price structure I did with V5.
Subscription pricing for 120g/240g will likely level around $30 for 120g and $54 for 240g. We've hovered around these two for the past coffee clubs, so I think this is a good spot for me (for now).
The Coffees:
Black Honey Sidra:
Origin: Colombia
Region: Circasia, Quindio
Farm: Finca Campo Hermoso
Farmer: Edwin Noreña
Varietal: Sidra
Processing: Black Honey
Elevation: 1550-1600 masl
Profile: Spiced Florals, Black Tea
About the Coffee:
The cherries are picked once mature through manual selection. Then the cherries were set in an enclosed, low oxygen environment to ferment for 56 hours. The coffee was then dry-pulped, and put again into a low oxygen environment to ferment for 48 hours. After this stage, the coffee was laid out to dry on the raised beds for roughly 15 days.
Roaster's notes:
This was a weird one on the cupping table. I've never had a coffee that tasted pleasantly spiced. It wasn't a flat spice (I've had a few of those), rather it was a delicate, but deep spice. This was a weird one, and will definitely help stretch your understanding of how coffee can taste.
I think right when I cupped it, I kinda had a feeling that I'd end up buying a bag of this.
Double Anaerobic Washed Pink Bourbon:
Origin: Colombia
Region: Cauca
Farm: Granja El Paraiso 92
Farmer: Wilton Benitez
Varietal: Pink Bourbon
Processing: Double Anaerobic Washed Fermentation w/Thermal Shock
Elevation: 1900 masl
Profile: Bubble Gum, Passion Fruit
About the coffee:
Benitez started by selecting the ripe coffee cherries and sterilizing them through a bath of ozonated water and ultraviolet light. Then, the coffees were placed into bioreactors for 52 hours of in-cherry anaerboic fermentation at 18 degrees Celsius, during which time yeast is added to the mixture. The coffees were then de-pulped and the recovered mucilage was put back in for a second round of fermentation for 48 hours at 21 degrees Celsius. Lastly, the coffee underwent a thermal shock process where the coffees were immersed in 40C water, then removed and placed into 12C water. This drop in temperature helped minimize oxidation by "shocking" the bean and closing the pores of the parchment. The cherries were dried in a mechanical dryer until ideal moisture content was achieved.
Roaster's notes:
It's a coffee by Wilton Benitez. You know it's going to be special. This will be the third coffee I've featured from Benitez, so that should show how much I enjoy drinking his coffee.
This one tastes like bubble gum, passion fruit, just very "pink" flavors (lol).
Extended Semi-Washed Castillo + Colombia:
Origin: Colombia
Region: Santa Barbara, Antioquia
Farm: Villa Lucía
Farmer: Andrés Cardona
Varietal: Castillo + Colombia
Processing: Extended Semi Washed
Elevation: 1650 masl
Profile: Light Funk, Dried Fruits, Red Berries
About the Coffee:
This coffee went through two different fermentations. First, the cherries were fermented in open tanks for 72 hours. Afterwards, they were depulped and fermented for 130 hours in tanks with "coffee juice". The juice comes from the same cherries from the past fermentation steps, and he Cardonas also mixes in juices from other processes to to further enhance the resulting flavors. After the fermentation, he later dries the beans for 3-4 weeks in sun dryers.
Roaster's notes:
A very drinkable cup. On the cupping table, I was surprised that it's processing was a semi-washed. If you've been following, you may have noticed that I tend not to skew towards the traditional washed coffees.
Anyways, I think this coffee sits in a good place where it's clean, but still exhibits red berry notes.
Enjoy all!
(going to save thank you’s for reflection — but got a lot this time).