MyCoffeePub.com ended 2017 for their subscribers with Harden Coffee’s blend, the Orchard. This is a blend of coffees from Honduras and Guatemala and I’m anxious to get into it, so let’s slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17/12oz
MYCOFFEEPUB DEC. 2017: HARDEN COFFEE THE ORCHARD
I first heard of Harden Coffee from my friends at MyCoffeePub.com in February 2017, if I’m not mistaken. MyCoffeePub is a monthly subscription where you get one bag of coffee per month and it’s always a surprise. The guys at MCP have done a great job for the past year and a half to two years I’ve been working with them and they make excellent choices. Harden Coffee is a specialty coffee roaster and cafe located in the small town of Campbellsville in central Kentucky. They’re about 90 minutes away from Lexington or Louisville and would make a great stop both before and after a tour through Bourbon country! Harden occupies the classic American small town corner building in the downtown main street and it looks great!
Last time I had a Harden coffee, it was a Guatemalan from Huehuetenango. This morning’s coffee, December 2017’s MCP pick, is called The Orchard, and it’s one of five blends being offered on Harden’s website right now. I don’t see any single origin offerings from them, so I’d be curious to know if they’ve shifted their roasting entirely over to blends of if they’re just sort of “between origins” right now? In any case, The Orchard is a blend of Honduran and Guatemalan coffees that, “has a harmonious balance of fruit and earth.” Harden says to expect, “notes of stone fruit, peach and dark chocolate with wine like acidity” and they recommend this blend for people who like fruit-forward coffees. I am using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with a Handground grinder set to 3.
The first thing that hits me with this cup is a lot of nutty flavors. Pecans and walnuts are overflowing in the flavors of this coffee for me. I’d call this a medium-bodied coffee and it has a slick mouthfeel like an oatmeal stout has if you’re a beer drinker. As I keep sipping, my palate gets attenuated pretty quickly to those nutty notes and the coffee brightens up and picks up more fruitiness. I’m finding light apricot flavors and more apricot tartness, that gives a hint of pleasant sourness to the acidity (I know that may not sound good to the casual reader, but it’s very good), as well as green apple in the acidity and maybe a hint of citrus in there, too. The apple and apricot fruitiness and acidity play really well with the nutty notes in this cup and it’s clear why they called this coffee “The Orchard!” There is enough sweetness in the cup to balance all of that complex acidity and it makes for a very drinkable cup, which is not always the case for coffees that have a lot going on in the acid profile. This is definitely a bright, refreshing coffee and a nice example of how blending can be used to either a coffee out and balance it or, in this case, magnify an aspect of the flavor notes. Another wonderful choice from MyCoffeePub and some nice blending and roasting from Harden! Woot!