Let’s start the week off right with a selection from Volcanista Coffee Co.’s Special Supply Series. These are extra special coffees packaged in pristine white bags with a shiny red foil Volcanista logo and a cool, informative label and it’s a promise of something good to be found inside!
Buy Xinabajul Peaberry directly for $13/8oz
Volcanista Coffee Co. Sumatra Wahana Estate Natural review
VOLCANISTA COFFEE CO. GUATEMALA HUEHUETENANGO XINABAJUL PEABERRY
Volcanista Coffee Co. is one of my favorite Florida roasters, and there are a lot of them! Located in Atlantic Beach near Jacksonville, they must be neighbors with my top guys in Florida at Bold Bean! Maybe a Jacksonville coffee trip is in order someday… in any case, this is one of Volcanista’s current Special Supply offerings, smaller bags of more expensive, special coffees, although at $13 for 8oz, it’s still accessible to pretty much everyone. This is a Guatemalan peaberry selection that comes from around Huehuetenango. Xinabajul is the original name for the city of Huehuetenango and it usually refers to the city’s current soccer team. I don’t know if that’s on purpose, considering that peaberries are round like soccer balls, or if that’s just a happy coincidence!
Peaberries are coffee beans that are round, instead of the characteristic half-flat shape most people think of when they think about coffee. Most coffee cherries have two seeds (what we call coffee beans) in them and so as they grow, the sides that are pressed into each other flatten out. Peaberries are coffee cherries with just one seed in them, so the coffee bean end up round.This particular lot consists of peaberries from Bourbon and Caturra trees and Volcanista gives us tasting notes of, “dark chocolate, dried cherry, molasses, cinnamon, sweet aroma.” Yum!
I used my standard 1:16 pourover method for my samples, using 28g of coffee to 450g of water and about a 3:00 total extraction time. This coffee is roasted exactly the way I like my Guatemalan cups… it’s sweet, almost sugary, with a long aftertaste that has a little spice and dark chocolate in it. It has a syrupy mouthfeel and there is a little bit of apple-like acidity in the sip, but it’s a complement rather than a star player in this coffee, which is just sweet, sweet, sweet. Yet, somehow, this coffee isn’t cloying on my palate. There is a hint of roastiness in the medium-light roast level that gives just a hint of bitterness and that nicely counters the overall sweet cup profile, too.
My favorite Guatemalan coffees are the ones that are basically just sugar bombs and this one is right in that zone for me! Syrupy, medium-heavy body, apple sweetness and brightness, dark chocolate with some baking spices, and sugar heaped on sugar in the flavors. I mean, come on! So good!