Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co. Congo Kawa Maber

This morning I’m back in central Africa with Congo Kawa Maber from Milwaukee’s Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co. Let’s dive right in so we can get to the weekend faster!

Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co. 

Purchase this coffee directly for $18/12oz

Other reviews in this series: Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gelana Abaya, Myanmar Mandalay


ANODYNE COFFEE ROASTING CO. CONGO KAWA MABER

I’ve really enjoyed the coffees I’ve gotten from Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co. Anodyne is based in Milwaukee with three cafes currently and a fourth on the way. Anodyne has been roasting coffee since 1999, which makes them an elder in the specialty coffee tribe, but all that experience also shows nicely in their coffees. Today’s coffee is Kawa Maber from Congo. Kawa Maber means “good coffee” and it’s also the name of 2,200 member strong cooperative that produced this lot. The cooperative owns 20 washing stations and this lot of coffee came from the Ituri district in the northeast corner of Congo. Checking out a map, I was surprised to see how huge Congo is. Ituri, this single district is over twice the size of the entire country of Burundi, whose coffees I’ve been enjoying the heck out of, too. Burundi and Congo tie for the lowest GDP in Africa and are among the poorest countries in the world, so fostering specialty coffee exportation is vital to these countries and their local communities.

This lot consists of Bourbon, Blue Mountain and Mundo Novo varietals grown in the 1500-2100masl range and it’s a fully washed coffee. Anodyne gives us tasting notes of, “green grape, cantaloupe, nutmeg” so let’s check it out. I used my usual pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. My Handground grinder was set to 3 and I use Third Wave Water for consistent, quality water in my brewing.

This produced a fairly light-bodied cup with with some nice, bright tones. I get some lemon candy acidity that is slightly more lemony and slightly less candy-y (lol) than in the other coffees of late that I’ve been using this descriptor. It’s more lemon zest but not insanely acidic or tart at the same time. It’s a really nice, fresh lemon flavor note. The sweetness does have a green grape character to it. It’s hard to really describe well for me, but I did have a flavored carbonated water recently that was billed as “white grape” and the flavors were similar. I didn’t really catch the canataloupe flavor note in the descriptor but this is a really delicious coffee all the same. I enjoyed it more as it cooled down, and it just continued to open up and get sweeter and more delicious to drink the closer to room temp it got. This one is really worth giving it time to cool down and enjoying it lukewarm (I know, but really you’re not doing yourself any favors when you drink coffee nuclear hot… it actually suppresses activity of flavor receptors). Another fantastic Anodyne coffee! YUM!