Meta Coffee Roasting Co. Organic Peru La Florida

Meta Coffee Roasting Co. is Kansas City’s most recent (that I know of) addition to our awesome coffee scene! Meta Coffee Roasting Co. was founded earlier this year by Zach Tarhini and his focus in Kansas City’s competitive coffee market is on organic coffees. [ref]http://www.feastmagazine.com/the-feed/article_96dcaad4-fe69-11e4-80ee-b73a306f2ca3.html[/ref] Zach sells his coffee locally through Nature’s Own Health Market on Main St. near Westport as well as at the Brookside Farmers’ Market. The coffee I’m reviewing today, Meta’s organic Peru La Florida, is also available for purchase through Meta’s website. A feature I like is that Zach offers this coffee in 8oz ($9), 12oz ($13) and 16oz ($16.50) sizes. You can read a short interview with Zach in Recommended Daily.

Meta Peru

This coffee comes from central Peru, an area that grows about 40% of the coffee that comes from this country. This coffee has the “SHB” or “strictly hard bean” (synonymous with SHG or strictly high grown) designation, meaning that it comes from farms above the 1350masl mark. The varietals are Caturra, Bourbon and Typica and this is a washed and sun-dried coffee that is both organic and fair trade. A lot of the farms in this part of Peru are small, so as is common in most coffee-growing countries, the farmers tend to work together in cooperatives. La Florida is a coffee co-op that was founded in 1966 and has had as many as 1,200 members. The co-op not only provides education and socio-economic support but also teaches its members organic and sustainable farming practices and much more. [ref]http://www.interamericancoffee.com/peru-cac-la-florida-cooperativa-agraria-cafetalera-la-florida/[/ref] It’s good to support known co-ops that actually care about the land because less scrupulous producers in Peru have actually clear cut rainforest to make way for inexpensive, yet still organic, coffee production.[ref]http://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/content/peru-1[/ref] I doubt most people have that in mind when they drink a cup of organic coffee, yet it is a reality in Peru.

I haven’t had a lot of coffee from Peru, but what I have had has struck me as generally straightforward, mild and easy to drink. Zach left me a sample of his cold brew, too, and I took a quick look at that last week. It had nice, syrupy body, lots of sweetness and a bit of maple syrup with virtually no acidity. I got some on my hands and walked around the house for about 20 minutes just smelling my hands! Lots of sweet chocolate aroma from Zach’s cold brew version. If he isn’t selling this at the farmers’ market on weekends, he needs to be because it’s tasty and it is hot and muggy in Kansas City this time of year!

I prepared this coffee at home both as Gino pourover and AeroPress. They made similar cups for me, maybe slightly brighter in my AeroPress, which has been super dialed in lately! This is a balanced, clean, just-plain-nice cup of coffee! There is some chocolate note in the sweetness and I found some clean apple juice character in the acidity (which is light and round) and sweetness of my cups. The mouthfeel is on the light side of medium and the aftertaste was mild and relatively short.

This would make a nice daily drinker for people who like lower-acid, sweeter and milder cups. It has some similarities with Brazilian coffees in that way, but this cup is way more interesting, to me, than most Brazilians and without all the nuttiness (which is sometimes nice and other times gets old). I really like the profile Zach is using on this coffee and I think it is a very appealing, easy-to-drink coffee. I’m really looking forward to more from Meta Coffee Roasting Co. and this is an exceptional first offering!

Make sure you check out Stacey Lynn’s impressions of this coffee, too!