Iowans (and everyone else!), rejoice! Today I’m taking a look at this month’s MyCoffeePub.com selection, Ross Street Roasting Co.’s Sigri Kula Peaberry from Papua New Guinea. Slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $15/12oz.
MYCOFFEEPUB APRIL 2018: ROSS STREET ROASTING CO. PAPUA NEW GUINEA SIGRI KULA PEABERRY
I came home yesterday to a bag from MyCoffeePub.com waiting on my doorstep. This is a highlight of every month… what’s it going to be? I do the same ritual every time. I look at the shipping bag, I feel it to try to discern the shape of the coffee bag inside, I smell the bag (which is usually a mix of coffee with fragrances of USPS truck) and try to guess what’s inside. Two years into this game, I still have never been right, but that doesn’t keep me from playing every month! I know the thought of a surprise bag of coffee arriving once a month can stress people out, but with at least two years of working with MCP in my past I have yet to receive a coffee from them I didn’t love. Try them out!
April 2018’s selection is Ross Street Roasting Co.’s Sigri Kula Peaberry from Papua New Guinea. I am really happy to see MCP pick another Ross Street coffee and I feel like KC Coffee Geek and Ross Street Roasting Co. have been growing right alongside one another since the beginning! Back in mid-2016, I got contacted from the guys at MyCoffeePub and they said they wanted to work with Brian Gumm, owner/roaster/everyman at Ross Street Roasting Co., but that they wanted me to pick the coffee! So, Brian sent me some samples and we decided and that was that. It was a cool opportunity and a lot of fun and, if I’m being totally honest, a little nerveracking! That ended up being June 2016’s selection and now they’re back with a coffee I know Brian is really excited about. As luck would have it, I was in touch with Brian late last week about getting some new coffees from him and he was pumped about this PNG selection. And, lo anb behold, it arrived on my doorstep via MCP instead! LOL
So, let’s get to this coffee. This is a selection of various arabica peaberries (more on that in a sec) grown around 1550-1600masl on the Sigri Estate in Papua New Guinea’s Western Highlands/Waghi Valley region. Peaberry is the name for a coffee “mutation” when there is only one coffee seed (what we call a bean) growing inside the coffee cherry (didja know coffee is a fruit?!). Normally, there are two beans inside the cherry, which is why coffee has that dome shape. The flat side is where the beans are pressed up against one another. Peaberries tend to be smaller (although not in this case) and have a round or American football shape to them. The Sigri Estate employs shade for growing coffee, and they take conservation of the water, soil and bird population on the estate really seriously. At least 90 species of birds use the estate as a habitat! Peaberries make up about 6% of the crop and they go through a lot of sorting to get separated out. This is a washed coffee and, apparently, the entire special process for this coffee is called “kula,” hence the name.
Brian considers this coffee to be a “medium” roast and Ross Street Roasting Co. gives us tasting notes of, “sweet aroma, chocolate and raisin notes, med-heavy body, syrupy mouthfeel.” I am using my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. I use a Knock Aergrind grinder that I’ve been messing with the grind settings for another review and so this morning’s brew ran a little fast, but man, the coffee is good! I did 40 second bloom and then the rest of the brewing only took 2:21, about 45-60 seconds faster than usual.
My first coffee from Papua New Guinea that I can remember struck me as being super dense and heavy, and this isn’t far off from that. This is a heavy-bodied coffee with a big sense of density on my palate and a nice, creamy mouthfeel. It really reminds me of the sensation of drinking whole milk and that kind of mouthfeel usually conveys a lot of sweetness, as it does in this case. Right up front I get a sweet raisin note with a lot of caramelized sugars. Those sugars run into a dark caramelized sugar/slightly roasty note in the second half of the sip and into the aftertaste that I just cannot get enough of. That’s a lot of sugars and sweetness to deal with and there is some balance in the acidity of this cup, but overall this coffee leans into the sweet, sweet, SWEET side of the spectrum. The acidity is a little hard for me to nail down. It has a slightly citrusy element, orange or tangerine, but it’s not fully citrus at the same time. There is a clean, cool vibe I get from malic acidity (think of the acids that you’d find in an apple) in this coffee, too. A crispness, if you will. The acidity is definitely a “condiment” in the case of this coffee, there to give necessary balance against all that sweetness. Yum. The finish on this coffee is sweet and almost leaves a bit of a sugar goober in the back of my throat, but stops just short of that. Sorry, I don’t know how else to explain that, but anyone who has ever drunk a soda or had a piece of candy knows what I’m talking about. The long aftertaste has a hint of roast, tons of sweetness and gives me a milk chocolate feel.
This is a KILLER cup of coffee. It’s not super complex, but this is a super easy drinking coffee and it has awesome flavors as well as great body and mouthfeel. I’m testing a cold brew device right now for another review and I’ve tried a couple of really light coffees in it, so this is going to be my benchmark for a heavy coffee and I think it’s going to be awesome! This is a fantastic selection from MyCoffeePub this month and I can only imagine it’ll be a subscriber favorite for this year. Brian and Ross Street Roasting Co. knocked this coffee out of the park! Instabuy!