Blue Monarch Coffee Guatemala San Pedro La Laguna

We just had winter storm Jupiter blow through Kansas City and we came out pretty much unscathed, but I wasn’t worried about being snowed/iced in when I had a bag of this sweet Guatemalan coffee from Kansas City’s own Blue Monarch Coffee!

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Blue Monarch Coffee Kerinci Highlands review


BLUE MONARCH COFFEE GUATEMALA SAN PEDRO LA LAGUNA

Today’s coffee comes from new kids on the block (in Kansas City), Blue Monarch Coffee. Tyler and Caleb really impressed me with their current Sumatran offering and they were even more excited about this selection from Guatemala. This is a lot that comes from various smallholder farmers around San Pedro, in the Atitlan region of Guatemala. Most of the coffee in this region is grown on the volcanic slopes surrounding Lake Atitlan at altitudes of 1500-1600masl. This lot contains Typica, Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai varieties that are fully washed.

The gentlemen at Blue Monarch give us flavor notes of, “savory floral, lemon-lime, apple, toffee and wine” for this cup. As always, I used my standard 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filters and a Handground grinder on 3.5. The aroma on this cup gave me some raisins and plums. In the cup this is both a sweet and bright example of a Guatemalan coffee. There is nice lemon-lime acidity in the cup, more so in the second half of the sip than right up front like I usually perceive acidity. The front end of this coffee is sugary sweet, just the way I like a Guatemalan coffee! The acidity comes in about midway and really hits the center of my tongue and especially throat, which is another unusual characteristic of this coffee. It really makes for a juicy cup, which is a coffee that feels stimulatory on the palate and really invites you to drink more and more. This is often a property of the acidity of the coffee. This cup has a little bit of earthiness to it, too, which I felt added complexity and also contributed to the wine-like finish and aftertaste. This coffee finishes quite dry on the palate and with that hint of earthiness and the slightly tannin feel to the acidity, it really does come across “winey” in overall character.

This is a really interesting cup. It has the sweetness I really love in Guatemalan coffees and a pleasant acidity profile, but lots of complexity I don’t always associate with this region. I was very pleased with both of Blue Monarch’s samples they gave me. For their first public offering, these are both really well-roasted, nice coffees that make quite an impactful statement. They could’ve played it safe and rolled out some tamer blends or a darker roast, but Caleb and Tyler are swinging for the fences with these coffees and I loved them both!