Bold Bean Coffee Roasters have sent me great coffee this year and their current direct trade offering from El Salvador, the Finca Malacara B, is no exception! Finca Malacara is a farm located on the slopes of the Santa Ana volcano, prime coffee growing territory in El Salvador. The farm has been growing coffee since 1925 and is part of a cooperative of farms called Chantuc, started by Emma Alvarez, the daughter of the farm’s founder. Finca Malacara sits at 1500masl and grows red, orange and yellow bourbon varietals.[ref]http://www.chantuc.com/ourfincas.php?id=98[/ref] This coffee is washed and sun-dried and you can buy it directly from Bold Bean for $16/12oz bag.
Bold Bean’s Finca Malacara B is a really nice Central American coffee that is surprisingly… well… bold! I found a lot of raisins in the dry fragrance of the coffee as well as in the aroma of the brewing coffee (I found I liked the results of a 1:15 ratio in my Gino dripper best). There was a bit of cinnamon and other warm spices in the brew aroma, too.
After brewing, I picked up lots of florals and some peach or apricot in the aroma. There were significant notes of jasmine tea in the aroma, too, although I didn’t get much of that in the flavor. For such a delicate array of aromas, I found the flavors in the coffee to be much more aggressive. The coffee had a medium body with a lingering aftertaste of peach, especially as the cup cooled.
In the warmer cup I was tasting a lot of fresh plum and there was a pleasant balance between sweetness and bitterness in this coffee, giving it a nice complexity yet still maintaining good drinkability. It usually takes me quite a long time to drink a cup of coffee and evaluate it but I found myself getting pretty greedy with this one and it was gone much faster than usual, sending me back to the kitchen to make more! This coffee lies a little dry on the palate but, overall, it was delicious, easy to drink and complex and that’s not always a common combination to find.
For another perspective on this coffee check out Drew’s review on Corner of the Cafe.