Let’s start the week off with a Guatemalan coffee from Bridge City Roasters. I really loved their Burundi and Ethiopian offerings, so let’s see how this excellent roaster handles the sweeter, more chocolatey coffees typical of Central America. Slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $14/12oz
Bridge City Burundi Munyinya Hill Peaberry Honey review
Bridge City Coffee Ethiopia Konga Yirgacheffe review
BRIDGE CITY COFFEE GUATEMALA YEPOCAPA CATUAI
Bridge City Roasters is a new roasting company located in Greenville, South Carolina. With goals of opening a cafe and usinf Bridge City as a means to help people through employment as well as giving back to their community, Bridge City has big ideas and the coffee to back them up. Take a peek at my Burundi review, linked above, for more of the story on this company so we can get right to the coffee…
This morning’s coffee is from ten farmers of La Cooperativa San Pedrana Agricola in the Yepocapa area of Guatemala who work with Ryan Chipman’s Yepocapa Coffee company. Read more about this company in the link above. This lot is Catuai variety grow at 1372masl or above. This is a washed coffee that Bridge City says has flavors of, “caramel, honey, citrus.” I used my standard pourover setup using a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino. Handground grinder was set to 3 and I use Third Wave Water for all my brewing.
The aroma on this cup is sweet and caramelly with some hints of cocoa. Taking my first sips, it’s clear to me that this coffee is going to be one of the Guatemalan “sugar bombs” I love so much. This coffee has a medium-heavy body with a bit of a creamy dairy mouthfeel, especially in the second half of the sip and finish, which is sweet. Right up front my palate is hit with caramel sweetness that is tempered in the mid-sip by a light orange/tangerine acidity. I would say this coffee has pretty low perceived acidity… that orange and tangerine note is there to give some interest and balance and elevate this bottom-heavy coffee a little, but otherwise this cup is really all about the sugar development in these Catuai beans. The second half of the sip has some nice orange juiciness to it, very sweet but with a little citric acid to brighten up the cup, as I said. The finish is sweet and I get a little peppery note in the early aftertaste. Otherwise, the aftertaste lingers between sips and almost reminds me of a Sugar Daddy caramel lollipop.
I’m a total sucker for these super sweet, super sugary Guatemalan coffees. This one has enough of that orange and citrus to be a little brighter and a little more balanced than some of them can be, and this coffees walks right up to the cloying line and looks over the fence, but there’s enough balance to keep it from being too sweet. It’s warm and caramelly and has a beautiful dairy-like mouthfeel and it’s one of those liquid candy coffees, for my palate. Yum! Yum!