Sad day! The last of my Peixoto Coffee Roasters samples has finally come around, but we’re ending on a high note with one of Anny Ruth Pimental’s Finca Loma La Gloria red honeys! Let’s get right to it!
Purchase this coffee directly for $21/12oz
Phoenix New Times article on Peixoto
Peixoto Coffee Roasters Panorama review
Peixoto Coffee Roasters Ecuador La Guiglia review
Peixoto Coffee Roasters Família Peixoto review
PEIXOTO COFFEE ROASTERS EL SALVADOR LOMA LA GLORIA
One can only imagine that Julia Peixoto Peters, co-owner of Peixoto Coffee Roasters and cafe in Chandler, AZ, and Anny Ruth Pimental have a lot to talk about. Both daughters of a long line of coffee producers (Brazil, in Julia’s case and El Salvador in Anny Ruth’s) and intimately involved in coffee themselves, I’m sure the connection is strong. Peixoto’s rich coffee history is beautifully documented on their website (links above) and you can read all about Anny Ruth, too, who is a veritable coffee celebrity (and well-deserved) on Instagram. Today’s coffee is from Anny Ruth’s family estate in El Salvador, Loma La Gloria where high quality and breaking tradition are both valued aspects of the culture there.
This particular coffee is a red honey process Bourbon, possibly the same lot I tried from Manzanita not too long ago and loved. Honey process coffees are a hybrid between naturals and washed coffees. These coffees are run through a depulping machine that ruptures the skins of the coffee cherry but still leaves behind the goopy mucilage “honey” layer. In a washed coffee, these coffee seeds (beans) would go into the fermentation tanks where that goopy layer would be eaten away by microbes in the water, but in the case of honey process coffees, they’re laid out on mesh drying tables and dried with the mucilage intact. Generally “yellow” honey coffees have the most mucilage removed, “reds” are sort of medium goopy and “blacks” have the most mucilage left intact. This type of processing is supposed to give more body, sweetness and fruitiness to the coffee while retaining the cleaner, less-fermented flavors of a washed coffee.
Peixoto says, “Dominating the cup are deep fruit notes, date and raisin upfront with lighter tones of apricot and grape which are followed up by warming spices that remind us of cola, and finishing up with a soothing toasted marshmallow and chocolate.” Holy smokes!
I used my standard 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral pourover for this coffee, along with Third Wave Water for my brewing. Handground grinder was set to 3. Made this way, I find my cup to have a medium body and a dynamic fruitiness, for sure. There is a green apple acidity to the cup as well as a little tartness and “stone fruit” note that I associate with apricot. That gets a little peachy in the aftertaste, too, but not like yesterday’s washed Ethiopian from Sambalatte which was a peach/apricot bomb! It’s more subtle in this one, although as I write this between sips I am really tasting a lot of peach in the aftertaste. Yum
In the mid to late sip I get some purple grape, bordering on grape soda, and in the finish and aftertaste this does take on a cola note (think flat, uncarbonated Coca Cola). All those date, raisin, marshmallow and chocolate descriptors escaped me, perhaps because of using Third Wave Water, which does tend to amplify the brightness of coffees, it seems, but I don’t like the coffee any less because of having fewer of those deeper sweet notes. It’s plenty sweet the way it turned out from my brewing! I got more stone fruit out of this cup while Manzanita’s roasting of this coffee brought out tons of cherry and baked goods, like a cherry pie sort of vibe. Both are fantastic! Anny Ruth’s Loma La Gloria has a superb reputation and for good reason. This is a dynamic, clean, complex cup that is also inviting and warm and super easy to drink and I absolutely love coffees like that. Peixoto did an awesome job on all four of the coffees they sent me and now I know why Peixoto gets thrown out there every time I ask people whose coffee I should be tasting!