Roast House Ecuador Gilda Carrascal Pacamara

Sadly, today we have our last coffee from Spokane, WA’s most excellent Roast House and this one just sold out (which is awesome for Roast House, but a bummer for you!). As you dear readers know I still like to add to the catalog of reviews here on the site, so even though this coffee is no longer available, let’s have a taste anyway…

Roast House Coffee

Purchase this coffee directly for $11/8oz SOLD OUT!

Roast House Kenya Karimikui AA review

Roast House No Limits 2.0 Espresso review

Roast House Homacho Waeno review


ROAST HOUSE ECUADOR GILDA CARRASCAL

This morning’s coffee is from the Gilda Carrascal co-op in the Pichincha region of Ecuador. Until somewhat recently, Ecuadoran coffee was mostly commodity grade, high yield and relatively low quality. With the interest of importers like Red Fox Coffee Merchants in Ecuador and farmers seeing higher incomes coming from better quality lots, the farmers there have quickly adapted to the idea of better practices to grow better lots and sell them at a much higher price. This year, Gilda Carrascal separated their coffee into three varietal lots. Roast House bought some of this one, the Pacamara selection. It’s no wonder this coffee sold out already… Pacamara fans can detect these coffees for sale more efficiently than a truffle pig can find fungi! LOL

Pacamara is the gigantic coffee bean (I just love them!) that results from hybridization of Maragogype and Pacas. Roast House gave us tasting notes of, “Mango, raw sugar, guava juice” for this coffee. I have been throwing down mangoes regulalry over the past month, but I’m not sure I’ve ever even eaten a guava, so we’ll see what my palate decides! I used my standard 1:16 pourover ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water for my cups of this coffee. My dripper is a notNeutral Gino with Kalita 185 filters, grinder is a Handground set to 3 and I use Third Wave Water for everything these days!

This is a delicious cup! I get a medium-heavy body that has a coating presence on my palate and tongue and offers a sense of “weight.” The initial flavors are sweet, yet bright and with a hint of tartness, reinforcing those tropical notes offered by Roast House. I do get a little mango from this coffee and there is also a hint of roast in the cup, too. The acidity is tropical fruit all the way… I’m not sure what actual kind of acids will give that in coffee, but it’s not citrus and it’s not really malic either. I don’t get any cola vibes, so I wouldn’t say phosphoric either, but whatever it is is fruity and reminds me eating tropical fruits, for sure, along with that hint of tartness that comes with ripening in fruit, as well. There is plenty of sweetness to anchor this cup and everything is wrapped up in a nice, balanced, clean package. This is an easy drinker with great flavors and so it’s understandable why it flew off Roast House’s shelves!

Hopefully this is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Roast House and KC Coffee Geek! I thought all four of the coffees (links above for the rest!) were really excellent and they have some really different offerings on their website… like that white coffee, and wintertime will require me to get a couple of their dark roasts and blends in… an awesome roaster and I’m so happy I was finally able to give them a try! Woot!