Yellow Dog Coffee Co. is back this morning with their dark roast Organic Sulawesi. Yes, I said dark roast! Let’s check it out!
Purchase this coffee directly for $16.50/12oz
YELLOW DOG COFFEE CO. ORGANIC SULAWESI RANTEKURUA ESTATE
Yellow Dog Coffee Co. was started by Rob and Sereta Wilson from their home and farm in Norman, Oklahoma. The couple live on 20 acres, where Sereta runs a dog rescue and doggy daycare business. 12% of the profits from Rob’s coffees goes to Annie’s Rescue Foundation, which supports the health needs of shelter dogs. As a dog lover, I’m a sucker for stories like these, but how’s the coffee??? Let’s dive right in…
This morning’s coffee is a mix of Catimor, S795 and Typica grown on the Rantekarua Estate, which rests on the slopes of Mount Karua in the Tana Toraja regency of South Sulawesi. Coffee grows at 1400-1700masl here and the estate is remote. The nearest city is 4 hours away on unpaved roads! This coffee is washed and sun-dried rather than wet-hulled like many of the coffees in Indonesia. This is a certified organic coffee that Rob roasts to a “medium/dark” roast level. Opening the bag, these beans are shiny and definitely made it past second crack in the roaster, but they have a beautiful, uniform gloss to them and I know I’m “not supposed” to like dark roasts, but I like good ones as much as I like light roasts, so I’m anxious to tear into this cup!
I’m using a new brewing method now that my Trinity Coffee Co. Origin is here. This uses a smaller Kalita 155 filter and the Origin is a flat-bottom, glass filter holder with lots of holes in the bottom that can be blocked with silicone blockers. I currently have mine set up so 6 holes are freely flowing. Because of the smaller capacity, I’m still using a 1:16 ratio but the actual weights have changed to 22g of coffee and 352g of Third Wave Water. With a 30 second bloom, the total draw for this coffee was 3:30.
Taking a sip, this is a medium-heavy bodied coffee with lots of dark sugar sweetness and plenty of roast character, as I expected from such a dark roast. With coffee, there is a trade off between origin character and roast level. Lighter roasts preserve more “origin character” or the unique characterstics of the coffee and how it was grown. As coffee is roasted darker and darker, the flavor profile shifts to being about the roast… sugar development and roast notes. Of course, some origins lends themselves to darker roasting better, and a good dark roast is not just a scorched, blackened coffee, but will have a nice balance to it even though that balance is between sweetness and the bitterness inherent in darker roasting rather than the fruitiness and other characteristics of the coffee itself that come through in coffees taken a little past first crack.
This Sulawesi from Yellow Dog has some nice caramel sweetness and a milky texture to it not unlike caramel candy. It gets balance from the roast level, which contributes a dry, slightly bitter flavor that plays well with the sweetness and tempers it. I get a little woodiness in the nuances in this cup along with hints of incense, both being flavors that sometimes come from wet-hulled coffees from the same part of the world, rather than washed ones like this, but they’re there nonetheless. Even with this dark roast I do get a little bit of malic acidity (think of the type of acidity in crisp apples) coming through, but I do brew with Third Wave Water, which tends to enhance acidity, so your mileagle may vary a lot in this regard depending on the water you use.
I’m not a milk and sugar kind of guy, really, so I don’t have any to test this out, but I’m sure this is a coffee that plays well with both. This is a nicely roasted coffee. I know dark roasts are a little “out of place” in the specialty coffee/third wave world, but the majority of the rest of the coffee drinkers in the USA identify themselves as liking “smooth, dark, bold, rich” coffees and this fits that bill, for sure! I think it’s a smart move for roasters to keep at least one coffee that they can roast dark in the rotation to appeal to these drinkers, since there are so many of them. Another nice job from Yellow Dog Coffee Co! Yum!