Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters La Gabriela (Tarrazu, Costa Rica)

The selected My Coffee Pub subscription coffee for the month of August 2015 is Sweet Bloom’s La Gabriela from Tarrazu, Costa Rica. Let’s take a look! Even if you’re not a subscriber, you can order a single bag of La Gabriela for $17 from My Coffee Pub.

Sweet Bloom is a reputable coffee roaster and café located west of Denver in Lakewood, Colorado. I have never been able to visit, but my other experience with Sweet Bloom’s coffee was having their espresso prepared by Little Owl Coffee in the LoDo section of Denver when I was there for work at the beginning of 2015. It was really bright and sweet and I was giving a ride to this meeting to someone I had just met at the airport and she called it, “sunshine in a cup” which was totally appropriate!

This coffee is a washed blend of Caturra and Catuai varietals grown by Gabriela Azofeifa Monge at Finca La Gabriela. The coffee grows from 1750-1800masl range in the highlands of the Tarrazu growing region.[ref]http://sweetbloomcoffee.com/collections/all/products/nuevo-pacho-veracruz-mexico[/ref] About 35% of the coffee grown in Costa Rica comes from Tarrazu, which produces most of the more complex coffees due to the higher altitude here than in the other regions of the country. The region is well-known for it’s good processing, clean coffees and the mills are used to processing in such a way as to keep microlots like this La Gabriela separate from other farms’ coffees.[ref]http://www.cafeimports.com/origin_costarica[/ref]

I prepared this coffee both as a 1:15 notNeutral Gino (basically a Kalita Wave) pourover and using an inverted AeroPress with 18g of coffee to 240g of water for a 2:00 immersion. I think the AeroPress won the contest, again! I don’t know what’s going on with my AeroPress, but I like it! This is a sweet, straightforward cup of coffee not unlike the Peruvian coffees I’ve been drinking this year. There is lots of milk chocolate in the aroma and the dry finish in the sip reminds me a bit of high quality cocoa. The flavor of the coffee itself is very sweet with a nice bright acidity.

In the Gino the acidity leaned toward citrus and it also carried a bit of grassiness with it. My AeroPresses had none of the grassiness and the acidity was definitely malic, like apple juice. The mouthfeel is medium with a long apple-like aftertaste that also has some raisiny flavors for me. Overall this is a simple, really easy to drink cup of coffee that is bright and super sweet at the same time. This is a beautiful example of a sweet, bright, round Costa Rican coffee and I enjoyed sharing this one with some other coffee fiends here in KC!