Let’s start the week off with a Colombian coffee from Gator Coffee, a distributor of Colombian-grown and roasted coffee. This morning, I’m looking at Gator’s Pink Bourbon from Huila, Colombia, so let’s get to it!
Gator Coffee (currently being moved to another platform, use Amazon store link in the meantime)
Purchase this coffee directly for $13/8oz
**Both of the links above are for Amazon and these are not affiliate links, nor do I profit in any way if you click on them or buy something through them.
GATOR COFFEE COLOMBIA PINK BOURBON
I have to admit I don’t know anything about Gator Coffee as their website has lapsed and I didn’t know that until I sat down to start typing this review. I get approached by coffee companies all the time on social media and via email and if I’m in the middle of a lot of things like I have been for the past couple months, then I often say, “Sure, send me some coffee” without vetting the company any further (especially if the message comes through on Instagram, like Gator Coffee’s did). What I can tell from some investigating is that Gator Coffee is based in Naples, FL and is a distributor of Colombian coffees that are roasted and packed in Colombia. He has a presence on Amazon, too, and my sample bag was shipped via Amazon, which does bring up some concerns… mainly, how old is this coffee? When was it roasted? The bag has a lot of information on it, which I highly appreciate, but it’s lacking a “roasted on…” date. It mentions that it was roasted and packed in Colombia by Cafe London, which means that it would have had to have been exported to the USA after roasting and then is, presumably, in one of Amazon’s warehouses ready to be shipped? That aside, the deal I have with people who send me coffee is that as long as it fits the loose definition of “specialty coffee” and isn’t flavored, then I’m willing to take a taste and share my thoughts with readers. I get really wary when I find out that the company sending me coffee is a distributor and not a roaster and when I see things like roast dates missing from the labels, but that being said I’ve had good coffee from companies that are set up this way, too, so I try to stay objective and keep my biases out of it as much as I can.
This morning’s coffee is Gator’s Pink Bourbon from Huila, Colombia. It was grown by Geremias Quisabony on his El Progreso farm in Acevedo municipality and was roasted in Colombia by Cafe London to a “medium” level. Just based on visual analysis alone, this looks accurate as the beans had a nice, even roast with no oils apparent at all. This is a washed and sun dried Pink Bourbon varietal grown at 1700masl. Gator gives us tasting notes of, “green apple, watermelon and raspberry, sweet hints of brown sugar and milk chocolate.” I used my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper using Third Wave Water and a Handground grinder set to 3.
I suspect this coffee has some age to it as there was no bloom whatsoever when I added my water, but in fairness lighter roasts bloom less to begin with. I regularly drink coffees that are 4-6 weeks off roast and this “feels” like it may be past that mark, but that’s just a wild guess on my part. That being said, I’m greeted by a medium-bodied coffee that has that “Colombia brightness” all over it. There is a lot of green apple acidity in the front end, to the point where it is a little tart. Raspberry is in there for sure, especially if agitate the coffee in my mouth and breathe out through my nose, I get a lot of it. I even get some of the watermelon notes mentioned on the label, but it’s more of a watermelon rind or that red part of the fruit that is really close to the rind. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a little more tart and less sweet and delicious as the flesh in the middle of the fruit. I get some pink grapefruit like acidity in this cup, too. This is definitely a bright, acidic and fruit-forward coffee, but Colombian coffees are often like this for me and this is the style of coffee from that country that I prefer. With smaller sips I get some nice florals in there, especially if I taste the coffee with that retronasal technique I used to pick up the raspberries. This coffee finishes a little dry/astringent on my palate and it’s not super-balanced, but in this case I kind of like that. This is a complex cup in the acid profile and there is a lot to look for and find, but between the complexity and the shift of balance strongly toward the bright end of the cup, it takes away from drinkability. This isn’t uncommon in specialty coffee, for me, and sometimes I like a coffee that is a sugar bomb or, like this one, leans really hard toward the fruits and acids. I don’t have a trained palate and I have not gone through a “here are the off-flavors you can encounter in coffee…” class/tasting/training, but that being said, I have a pretty good palate and I’m not picking up on anything that I don’t like in this cup.
I shot some messages back and forth with Gator Coffee on Instagram and I learned that it takes about 8 days, according to them, for coffee to be roasted and packed in Colombia and then ready for sale on Amazon. When I asked if they knew how old my sample may be from, he said it was roasted in July 2017. So, I just wrote a review on coffee that is fully 6 months off roast and it’s pretty darn good! It makes me wonder what this would’ve tasted like within a month of roast! But, this highlights the problem I brought up earlier in the review. Ordering coffee from Gator could be super fresh or it could many months off-roast. This is, by the way, the same problem with buying coffees in grocery stores that have a “best by” date on them. I’ve seen coffee in groceries with “best by” dates that are a full year out from the date I’m looking at the coffee.
So, here’s my bottom line. Even 6 months out, this is pretty darn good coffee! I know most people who buy specialty coffee, however, prize freshness, so I am cautioning them that there’s a good chance the coffees from Gator are going to be months old when they buy them. For people who may be reading this who shop their coffee at grocery stores and don’t care too much about roast dates, then Gator is a fine choice. I know absolutely nothing about importing, distribution, etc, but if this coffee is like Gator’s other offerings, I think they have access to some really interesting stuff and I would recommend they consider skipping the packing and roasting in Colombia, import these same coffees as green, and then contract roast with someone in Florida (and there are A LOT of really good roasters in Florida) and distribute coffee that is at its apex in flavor and freshness. I don’t know how this would change Gator’s model (probably a lot, considering you need space and logistics) but Gator has a specialty coffee product at specialty coffee prices, but they’re competing with more of the commodity level market in the grocery store model and I don’t know how sustainable that it. I wish the best for Gator, they’ve got a really nice coffee here!