This morning I get to re-visit a coffee I drank three years ago with Malacara B, an El Salvadorean coffee from my friends at Bold Bean Coffee Roasters. Let’s dig in!
Other reviews in this series: Sweet Spot Espresso
BOLD BEAN COFFE ROASTERS FINCA MALACARA B
Bold Bean Coffee Roasters have been lighting up the specialty coffee community in Florida since 2011. Since they opened, they’ve grown to three cafes in the Jacksonville, FL area and I’ve had a lot of their coffee over the years and it’s always excellent! This morning’s coffee is one they sent me and I reviewed way back on Oct. 19, 2015! It’s always cool to come around to past coffees again, although remembering one accurately from that long ago is pretty tough! LOL
This is a selection of Red Bourbon beans that are grown around 1525masl by Roberto Dumont in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador. This is a fully washed coffee that retailed for $16.50/12oz but, unfortunately, it looks like it just sold out or went out of the rotation. I’ve been having some bad luck with that lately, but nonetheless, I want to talk about this coffee anyway. Malacara B is located on the forested side of Santa Ana volcano and was originally part of a larger farm that was divided into Malacara A, B and C in 1995 when it was passed down to other family members. The Dumonts grow red, yellow, orange and pink Bourbon but also have about 50 other varieties of coffee planted in an experimental coffee garden. Bold Bean tells us this coffee is very balanced with, “velvety milk chocolate notes, a date-like sweetness and a refreshingly sweet and crisp acidity similar to Fuji apples.” YUM! I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water for this coffee. I use a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filter and Knock Aergrind to do the hard work.
The aroma on this coffee is sweet and sugary with hints of baking spices. Taking my first few sips, this is clearly a super-balanced, easy drinking coffee that I would call a “crowd pleaser.” There is a lot of sugary sweetness up front, again, with hints of baking spices, especially cinnamon. Following this sweetness is a malic acidity that is crisp red apples like Fuji, Honeycrisp and Pink Lady all the way. Malic acid is the fruit acid found in apples and so when you find it in coffee, it’ll give you a sense of apples. This coffee has a medium body with a creamy texture and a full mouthfeel. It finishes sweet and has a bit of chocolate in the finish and aftertaste, along with those hints of cinnamon and apples. This is a bit of an apple pie in a cup, really!
It’s funny because looking back on my previous review of this coffee from three years ago, I found this to be a completely different coffee with florals and peaches, plums, etc. That was a mix of various colors of Bourbon and, that was three years ago and a lot changes in crops over that time. That was a short and sweet review, too, just like this one, and that’s not a bad thing. This is a pretty straightforward coffee with enough complexity to be interesting while still maintaining super drinkability. The flavors work beautifully together and it’s super inviting and easygoing. I love coffees like this and I hope it returns soon if it’s just out of the rotation. If you missed it for the year, make a calendar reminder to check on it early 2019!