August 2017’s MyCoffeePub.com subscription just landed here in Kansas City and we’re back in Little Rock, Arkansas with a Rwandan coffee from Mylo Coffee Co. Mylo was featured back in March 2016 with a really nice Costa Rican natural so it will be great to try this roaster out again! It looks like they are still not selling online (at least I couldn’t find any links), so if you want to get your hands on this coffee, maybe try calling them, although I suspect you need to pick it up in a brick and mortar in the Little Rock area or right from their cafe/restaurant.
Mylo Coffee Co. Perla Negra review from 2016
MYCOFFEEPUB AUGUST 2017: MYLO COFFEE CO. RWANDA GISHAMWANA ISLAND
I’m embarassed to say in 10 years of living in Kansas City I have never actually been to the state to my south, Arkansas. And, since it’s south of here, you know it’s pretty much the butt of every joke, as is our way here in the USA. There is some irony in Missourians making fun of Arkansasians, but I’ll leave that one alone. LOL I need to rectify my travel injustices sooner than later, but what I do know about Arkansas is that there is a pretty significant food and drink renaissance going on there as evidenced by the plethora of great coffee choices from the central to northwest region of this state (Onyx, Mama Carmen’s, Airship, Mylo, etc etc). I love my MyCoffeePub.com subscription because I get to try a new roaster every month, but once in a while they revisit a blast from the past and that’s always fun, too, especially when it’s a roaster like Mylo Coffee Co. that doesn’t have an online sales presence and is, therefore, a bit tougher to get your hands on.
This month’s MCP selection is Mylo Coffee Co’s Gishamwana Island from Rwanda. Gishamwana Island is a small coffee growing island found in Lake Kivu, one of Africa’s Great Lakes that serves as a border between Rwanda and the DR Congo. This is a lot of Bourbon beans grown at 1500-1650masl and processed at the Gishamwana washing station on the island. This is a washed coffee and Mylo gives us tasting notes of, “Floral, sweet sage, lemongrass, tangy citrus, brown sugar.”
I used my standard pourover setup for this coffee, with a 1:16 ratio of 25g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. My Handground grinder was set to 3 and I use Third Wave Water for all my brewing. This gives me a medium-heavy, silky body and mouthfeel to this cup. Based on Mylo’s descriptors and my use of Third Wave Water, which tends to crank up the acidity in coffees a bit, I figured this would be a really bright, acid-forward coffee and instead it’s sweet and dense and seems to favor the lower end notes in the cup, which is a pleasant surprise! There is definite brown sugar and lots of caramel notes in this coffee. The sweetness is like one of those Sugar Daddy caramel lolipops and it’s absolutely delicious. Mylo Coffee Co. brought this coffee right up to the edge of being cloying in its sweetness. It isn’t, by just a smidge, and I love that. There is enough acidity to balance out the cup. I am getting some sweet citrus notes in the acidity as well as some apple juice character, too. There is a long, lingering aftertaste of caramel and maybe a little citrus, so I can see where Mylo’s lemongrass descriptor comes from in that regard. This is a sugar-bomb, for me, though, and it has been a while since I’ve had a coffee like this and I’m absolutely in love with it!