I was excited to find out this month’s Barista Coffee Box roaster is Publik. My wife was in Salt Lake City on business a couple years ago and she was going to go on a coffee run to Publik for me, but it didn’t pan out, so better late than never! This Salt Lake City roaster/cafe is a mainstay in the small Utah specialty coffee scene, so let’s check out their selection from Burundi to start with!
Barista Coffee Box (use “justonebox50”) to get 50% off your first box
Crop to Cup Importers page for this coffee
BARISTA COFFEE BOX MARCH 2017: PUBLIK BURUNDI NYARUCAMO
Publik started in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2014. By early 2016, they had expanded to two new locations, so the growth has been fast and furious. Their flagship location is huge and each Publik offers different menus and food, with Publik Kitchen being food-focused, as the name implies. Publik has at least 30 wholesale accounts throughout the USA, so it’s getting easier to find this fast-growing roaster’s coffee no matter where you are! They are featuring one blend and several African coffees in this month’s Barista Coffee Box, and I went straight for the Burundi after opening up the box.
This is a washed Bourbon coffee grown in the 1770-1890masl range. Burundi is like a lot of Africa in that the growers tend to have very small farms. They work cooperatively and pool their coffee at small washing stations and mills like this one in Bukeye Township. This coffee was sourced from Crop to Cup Coffee Importers, and the link above has a ton of information including lots of photos. This is my first time visiting Crop to Cup’s site and I am super impressed by the amount of information. Awesome!
Publik gives us flavor notes of “creamed honey, lemon meringue, vanilla” for this coffee. I used my standard pourover setup for my sample, a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water. I used a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filter, a Handground grinder set on 3.5 and Third Wave Water to brew.
The end result is a beautiful cup with lemon notes in the nose and a medium body with some tea-like properties in the mouthfeel. This is a sweet cup but the main player has to be this wonderful lemon candy-like acidity that permeates the entire sip. It definitely brightens the cup and really hits my cheeks and side of my tongue. The acidity in this cup isn’t quite bracing, and it’s somewhat soft and round, too, but it leans more toward the aggressive side of things, which I think works great in this coffee. There’s something a little earthy in this coffee, for me, too, particularly at warmer temps, but as the coffee cools down it’s just sweet and creamy and lemony and I love it.
This is a nice cup. It’s sweet, super lemony and bright but not abrasive or overly aggressive. It has nice balance. It’s not super complex, for me, and that’s fine. I feel like this would make for a really interesting cold brew or would be a really pleasant afternoon coffee because of its brightness. Super delicious!