I’ve been loving the tour of Cental American coffee I’ve been on courtesy of some samples sent from Owosso, Michigan roaster, Theodore’s Coffee Roasters. This morning, we’re back in founder’s Darwin Pavon’s home country of Honduras to check out their Santa Helena selection. When you set up an account and log in to order, shipping is free!
Purchase this coffee directly for $18/12oz
Other Theodore’s Reviews: Honduras Finca Quetanquira, Ethiopia Keneon Chire, Guatemala Esquipulas, Costa Rica El Higueron
THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS HONDURAS SANTA HELENA
Please check out my Guatemala Esquipulas review (link at the top of the review) for some background on Theodore’s Coffee Roasters and founder, Darwin Pavon. This coffee is the result of a direct trade relationship between Darwin and Finca Santa Elena. One of the things that attracted Darwin to this farm is that the workers there are employed year around instead of just in-season and he found this enhanced loyalty, consistency, quality and made for a happier work force, which is important for an agricultural product like coffee. This is a washed coffee of Icatu, Pacas and Caturra varietals grown at 1600masl.
Theodore’s gives us flavor notes of, “sweet citrus, floral and milk chocolate with bright blueberry finish” for this cup. It sounds pretty amazing, especially coming from what is presumably a washed coffee! I used my standard sampling setup with a 1:16 coffee to water ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino with Kalita filter. Handground grinder was set on 3.5 and I am pretty sold on brewing everything with Third Wave Water these days!
This turned out to be a very nice, pleasant, well-behaved coffee! Theodore’s roast style seems to be to bring out as much sweetness in the cup as possible and man, are they good at it! This cup has a medium to medium-heavy body with a very soft and sweet orange acidity that carries through the sip and into the finish. This is going to sound totally crazy and maybe my palate is whacked this morning, but I was also getting something in this cup that reminded me of wintergreen of all things. I caught this note in multiple sips and it wasn’t like chewing on a piece of gum, but it was unmistakeable to my palate. Maybe I’ll swing by the emergency room on my way to work this morning. LOL
Notes of wintergreen notwithstanding, there is a milk chocolatey tone to the sweetness and in the aftertaste with light hints of roast and a somewhat milk-like mouthfeel to this coffee, too. I didn’t pick up on any of the blueberry from the description, but because of being sick earlier in the month and having no ability to taste anything for about 10 days, my whole timeline got shifted and this coffee is about a month off-roast as I review it, so I may have missed the window for the fruit notes. As the cup cooled I didn’t get any more wintergreen, so who knows what that was all about. I found this to be a very sweet and clean coffee with enough acidity to give it some character and brightness. This would go over super if I took it to work… it’s one of those drinkable, delicious crowd-pleaser coffees and who doesn’t love that?!