Dreamland Roasters Guatemala

Dreamland Roasters is a small company founded and run by Jason and Kelly Ogle in Falcon, Colorado. The idea for the company came about in April 2014 and the name, Dreamland, is a tribute to Jason and Kelly’s sixth child, Noah, whose time on this Earth was short. As of right now Dreamland doesn’t have a website, but you can find Dreamland active on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I’m not sure how much this coffee costs to order or the best way to get it from Dreamland, but contact them and I’m sure they’ll be happy to hook you up! Update: Dreamland are working on a website, but in the meantime you can email Jason at dreamlandroasters@gmail.com, direct message him through Twitter @dreamloandroast or call/text at 719-822-1357.

The coffee I’m reviewing today from Dreamland Roasters is from Finca Candelaria, a farm in the Alotenango area of Guatemala. It was sourced by the excellent gang from Coffeeshrub/Sweet Maria’s. Finca Candelaria sits at 1220-1500masl on the ascent to the peak of Volcan de Fuego and a lot of the farm co-exists with natural forests. This region has been hit hard by roya or leaf rust, but Finca Candelaria has taken dramatic efforts to prune aggressively and limit the humid, shady conditions that La roya favors. The farm continues to thrive as a result. This particular coffee consists of B300, a dwarf bourbon varietal (Reference: Coffeeshrub.com).

I prepared this coffee three ways: pourover using my notNeutral Gino, AeroPress and old-school immersion cold brew over a 24-hour period of time (sitting on the counter, not in the fridge).

As a pourover, I got some carbon-y aromas from the coffee as well as some sugar. In the flavor this comes through as some bitterness like burned sugar, but I didn’t mind it. The coffee had a relatively smooth, medium body and a decently long aftertaste. There is chocolate in the flavors and some spiciness. In a handful of sips I tasted coriander and then as it continued to cool my mind went straight to pickles! Definitely picked up some strong dill flavors but the coriander and dill seemed to only hang around for a short range of temps. Maybe a total of 10 sips as I was writing, and then they were gone. So, don’t worry, this isn’t pickle-flavored coffee, but those flavors were definitely there for a short window! I didn’t get those flavors in the AeroPress, either. A mystery!

I got some nice tobacco flavors out of this coffee, too, so it seemed to be a relatively complex coffee, really, which is a bit unusual for a Guatemalan, in my experience.

The acidity was very tame and there was decent sweetness in the cup but there was also a bit of a harsh edge there. I’m not sure if that is something inherent to coffee from this region (I think it is) or the roast development, but there was some “bite” in each sip.

In the AeroPress the flavors were pretty much the same but I found the coffee to be a little more lively, that edginess was muted a little bit and as it cooled I picked up on a little fruit (not sure what, but just some fruity acidity) in each sip. The last 3-4 coffees I’ve reviewed I’ve liked better as AeroPress than pourover and this one definitely falls into that category for me, too! Not sure what it going on in my AeroPress these days, but I like it!

The AeroPress did seem to also slightly enhance the roasty character of this coffee and I got a bit more roast character than I wanted from this coffee. That being said, it was FAR from over-roasted, in my opinion.

For the cold brew I used a 1:7 coffee-water ratio with a French press grind. I used cold-out-of-the-tap water, gave it a good stir, covered with a cloth and came back in 20 minutes or so and broke up the crust and stirred everything together. 24 hours later I ran it through a Kalita 185 filter and was left with about 3 cups of concentrated cold brew. Not the most efficient way of making coffee! LOL

I drank it straight without cutting it at all and it was pretty good. Very low acid, which the coffee already was, and lots of nuts in the flavor. Pretty good body, short aftertaste, and some really nice cigar tobacco flavors in there, too. Not a bad cold brew, at all!

Overall this is pretty good cup. It’s more exciting than the average Guatemalan coffee I’ve had and it proved versatile by being a pleasant drinker under a variety of processes! Jason is pretty excited about another coffee he has roasted, so I’m looking forward to trying out more from Dreamland soon!