I’ve followed Radio Roasters Coffee on Instagram for a long time and I’ve always gazed lovingly at their packaging and labeling. They sent me a bunch of coffee to try out this month and I’m stoked to share it with you! Read on and you’ll find out about the connection between coffee and radio, and much more!
Purchase this coffee directly for $7/4oz (and other sizes, too!)
RADIO ROASTERS COLOMBIA FINCA EL PLACER
Radio Roasters Coffee is owned, operated and run by Chip Grabow in Scottdale, Georgia, a northeast suburb of Atlanta. Technically, it’s a side-gig for Chip, who worked at NPR for 15 years before moving over to CNN, where he still works full-time. It’s an amazing feat when you look at Radio’s website, social media presence and branding, none of which reads “hobby” or “side project” in any regard. This is intentional on Chip’s part and Ray hit the nail on the head in the Unpacking Coffee episode that features Radio when he said, “There’s no retail shops… that forces you to rely a lot on your packaging to tell your story when you don’t have face to face time with your customers and you don’t have a retail environment to tell your story in.” The professionalism displayed in Chip’s side-gig of Radio Roasters Coffee is insane, so it’d be downright frightening to see what he’d be doing if this was his sole creative output! LOL If branding is your thing, make sure you check out the links above to The Dieline and TNKR, and the Sweet Peach blog did a fantastic job with showing Chip’s beautiful roasting space. The other interviews and stories I linked to above allow Chip to tell the story of Radio Roasters Coffee way better than I can, so without further ado, let’s drink some coffee!
This morning’s cup is Chip’s Finca El Placer from Colombia. This small 5-hectare farm is located in San Agustin and owner, Pastor Ordoñez, is a member of the Los Naranjos association of 52 farmers dedicated to producing high quality lots in the Huila department of Colombia. El Placer is planted with some 17,000 Caturra, Castillo and Colombia coffee trees and this is a washed coffee, as you’d expect from Colombia. Chip gives us tasting notes of, “Sweet, floral, apple and cherry and balanced with a creamy mouthfeel.”
I used my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water for this coffee. Handground grinder was set to 3 and I used Third Wave Water as well as a notNeutral Gino brewer with Kalita 185 filters. I am greeted by sweet, bright and clean flavors right from the first sip. This is a medium-bodied coffee although the presence feels more than that on my palate because of the almost aggressive acidity of the cup, which in this case is a very good thing and not a detractor. I am getting a lot of green apple acidity with very apple-like sweetness in the cup, too. I picked up hints of lime in the acid profile toward the end of the sip, too, which added a hint of bitterness and some complexity to this cup.
I get notes very reminiscent of sweet cherries or cherry juice in the aftertaste. I don’t find much cherry during the sip but that aftertaste has a lot of it and it’s awesome! Holding the coffee in my mouth for a few seconds before swallowing gives me more of that lime character and a bit more bitterness while faster sips ramp up the cherry notes in the aftertaste and make this feel like a much lighter-bodied coffee.
What a great introduction to Radio Roasters Coffee! I have a lot from Radio Roasters Coffee to share with you, so stay tuned!
Radio
Thanks for the love! Happy to send you the samples…