Intent Coffee Roasting Papua New Guinea Purosa Valley Co-Op

intent PNGTodays coffee comes all the way from the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea via Intent Coffee Roasting in Portland, OR. I actually got to hang out and help Mark Johnson, owner of Intent, roast this coffee on May 4, 2015, when I was in town for work, making this coffee even more special. You can purchase this coffee directly from Intent for $13/12oz bag.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of the regions I have the least experience with. In fact, the only other PNG’s I recall drinking was roasted by Sunergos and I reviewed it quite a while ago. That Sunergos coffee is actually I think about all the time. It ranks in the top 3, easily, of the most memorable coffees I’ve ever had. It was tremendously heavy on the palate and so sweet and delicious.

Intent’s PNG from the Purosa Valley has some similar deep notes but it’s an overall more delicate coffee with more layers. Different coffees roasted different ways, but both undoubtedly enjoyable!

I prepared my samples using my usual 15:1 Gino dripper pourover method. The first cups I had featured a somewhat unusual, herbaceous, almost woody flavor that I didn’t have great descriptors for. I suppose this could’ve been some of the “floral” description given by Mark on the package label. The finish had a melange of spice notes and the body was medium-heavy with a lingering aftertaste. I picked up a few minty hints as well.

I tightened up the burrs on my grinder one step because the extractions were running a little faster than usual and subsequent cups of this coffee still had a nice, deep, rich character but none of those woodsy notes I was getting before. There was some brown sugar in there and some balancing acidity that had touches of orange flavors for me.

This was a nice, rich coffee to start my mornings off this week and another example of Mark’s great roasting under his Intent label. I have three more of his coffees to drink, and I’m looking forward to all of them!