Old Soul Co. is one of the featured roasters in the sampler pack of coffees that Crema.co sent me. Crema.co is one of my favorite “you pick” coffee subscriptions because of the beautiful, easy to use interface and excellent roasters. This is my first coffee from Old Soul Co., a new company to me, so let’s check it out!
Purchase this coffee from Crema.co for $18.50/12oz
CREMA.CO x OLD SOUL CO. BRAZIL FAZENDA ALTA VISTA
Old Soul Co. was founded in Sacramento, California in 2006 with the goal of offering great coffee and breads/baked goods to customers. Old Soul is a well-loved member of the Sacramento community for both their coffee and bread and co-owner Jason Griest travels to as many of the farms they purchase coffee from as he can.
Today’s coffee is grown by Robson Viela on Fazenda Alta Vista. Robson purchased the property, located in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil, in 2001. His first harvest took 7th place in the 2007 Cup of Excellence, an incredible achievement! Robson pays higher wages than most Brazilian farm owners and made a committment to provide a good work environment and life for his 13 full-time employees. Since 2007, he hasn’t had a single employee leave the farm, so he is doing something special in Brazil and let’s see how that translates to the cup!
This is a natural process, Yellow Bourbon variety grown around 1290masl. Flavor notes from Crema.co for this coffee include, “milky chocolate, pecan, butterscotch, hazelnut and tamarind.” I used my standard 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper using Kalita 185 white filters. Grinder is a Handground set on 3.5. I have to say I am almost never excited about drinking Brazilian coffees for whatever reason, but I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I found milk chocolate and cocoa notes throughout each sip and some nutty overtones, as well. Coupled with those chocolatey notes, the nuttiness leaned toward hazelnut for me, but please don’t expect the whallop of synthetic hazelnut like you’d get at the gas station from this coffee! LOL
I found some raisin hints in the aroma of this coffee, but not in the cup. There was a bit of citrus/apple acidity to give balance to all that sweetness and elevate the predominantly low notes of this cup. As the cup cooled it was just a deliciously sweet, nutty and chocolatey cup. Strangely, chocolate doesn’t always make itself obvious to my palate when I’m drinking coffee, so this is definitey one of the more chocolatey coffees I’ve run across. I really enjoyed this cup. Clean, sweet, hints of citrus and loaded with chocolate and nuts, this would pair well with food, in my opinion, or make a solid dessert coffee, but it’s super drinkable and inviting as a standalone cup, too. Yum!