I love discovering new coffee roasters and it’s one of the simple joys of keeping this blog going month after month. This morning I’m starting a new week off with a new (to me) roaster from Ohio, Ramble Coffee. I’m trying out their Papua New Guinea Eastern Highlands, so let’s dive in!
Purchase this coffee directly for $14/12oz (free shipping over $25)
RAMBLE COFFEE PAPUA NEW GUINEA EASTERN HIGHLANDS
Ramble Coffee is a relative newcomer to the specialty coffee world. It looks like the company was started in 2016 by John and Sara (sorry, I don’t know their last name!) as a way to bring a sense of adventure and community back to their hometown of Worthington, Ohio (northern suburbs of Columbus). They had built a cool teardrop camper (which is now the logo of Ramble Coffee) and hit the road with their two kids to see what the country has to offer and this inspired them to do the same with their work. They’re members of the Specialty Coffee Association and John has a graduate certificate in roasting from the Academy of Coffee Excellence.
The first coffee I selected from Ramble is their Papua New Guinea Eastern Highlands. This is a washed coffee from this “cool-tropical” region of PNG where the average elevation is 1500masl. This coffee is a mixture of smallholder crops from the Eastern Highlands. Ramble Coffee gives us flavor notes of, “Dark chocolate, hazelnut, orange” for this selection. I used my standard pourover setup for this coffee, using a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. My Handground grinder was set to 3 and I used Third Wave Water in my preparation.
I don’t drink enough PNG coffees to ever know quite what to expect from them! This one has lots of caramel tones in the brewing aroma and aroma from the cup. This is a medium-bodied coffee with a long aftertaste and a somewhat creamy mouthfeel. The first sip is bright and sweet and clean, so that’s a heck of a good start! There’s a green apple-like malic acidity to the cup that also reminds me a little of the cranberry in terms of intensity and having some tartness to it, too. There is a fruited sweetness to this cup, again like a honeycrisp apple, that is both sweet but also clean and refreshing and vibrant. In the warmer cup I got a few hints of florals. As the cup cools I get more of a cocoa/chocolate note that carries nicely into the aftertaste. The acidity gets a little more citrusy as the cup approaches room temperature, too, and I definitely get more nutty notes from the sip, especially in the aftertaste. A really nice caramel sweetness permeates this coffee throughout each sip and into the aftertaste, too.
This is a great coffee! I really enjoy the flavor profile in this one. It is really refreshing to drink and it just comes off as “vibrant” to me. Even the “darker” notes of chocolate/cocoa, nuts and caramel seem light and bright relative to how they come through in darker roasts. A lovely drinker as a pourover!
ESPRESSO
I had the time this morning to mess around a little with this coffee as espresso, not that that’s what Ramble Coffee intends for this selection. After a few dial-in shots I settled on pulling a 40g shot using 20g of coffee in 27 seconds. This produces a relatively thin crema but some nice flavors… lots of of tangerine, almond and a very caramel aftertaste. Not a bad single origin espresso by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a little bright for my personal tastes, but it’s clean and full of delicious flavors, so I would be happy getting served that in a cafe, for sure!
