It has been a long time since I got to sample Máquina Coffee Roasters’ coffee and this morning I’m happy to bring to you a fresh Rwandan that is on sale and has free shipping! But how does it taste?
Máquina Coffee Roasters website
Purchase this coffee directly, and currently on sale, for $16/12oz (was $18.50) – also free shipping!
MÁQUINA COFFEE ROASTERS RWANDA KANYEGE
Máquina Coffee Roasters was co-founded by Gabe Boscana, a 16+ year veteran of the coffee business. Gabe’s resumé includes names like Gimme! Coffee, Ritual, Sightglass, Intelligentsia and Paramo. Picking up from the San Francisco area, Gabe and his family moved to the small town of West Chester, Pennsylvania to pursue Gabe’s longterm dream of roasting his own coffee for the masses. With beautiful package design and one of the best logos in coffee, it’s hard to miss Máquina. I was super-impressed with the last round of coffee I had from Gabe last year, and this particular one is on sale and has free shipping, so let’s find out how it tastes! Side note, Máquina currently has 6 coffees roasting and they all have free shipping…
This morning’s coffee is Máquina’s Rwanda Kanyege (lot 0253, to be exact!). Kanyege is a washing station in Rwanda that handles coffee from about 200 smallholder farmers from the area around the station. Owner, Alphonse Kayijuka, built the station in 2013 and 2014 was its first season in operation, producingh 30 tons of coffee. Talk about jumping right in! This coffee is 100% Bourbon variety. Kanyege is located in the western part of Nyamaseke district and coffee grows around 1890masl here. Kanyege dry ferments their coffee after picking for at least 12 hours and then dries the coffee on raised beds for another 15-22 days. For this coffee, Máquina gives us tasting notes of, “Meyer lemon, sweet, baked rhubarb.”
I’m using my standard pourover method for this coffee of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water. Brewer is a Trinity Origin with Kalita 155 filter and I have all but the center three holes in the filter holder blocked. Grinder is a Knock Aergrind. For this one I did a long bloom at 60 seconds, and then the brew took exactly 3:00 after the bloom.
The aroma from this coffee is unusual, but pleasant. 100% of what I’m getting from this cup is coriander! If you put this under my nose blind I would think I’m smelling a coriander heavy beer like Blue Moon or just fresh ground coriander, it’s that strong for my brain! Not the normal aroma from a coffee, but I love that smell and so it doesn’t bother me one bit. Taking a sip, this is a medium-heavy to heavy-bodied coffee and it sits with a lot of substance on my palate. There’s a syrupy base to the coffee with some cocoa and dark caramel notes to it. Toward the mid sip there is a mild lemon candy acidity that gives some dimension to the cup and balances the sweet base some. Holding the coffee in my mouth and puffing air out through the back of my palate and nose (retronasal tasting, for you nerds!), I get some spicy notes, cinnamon, ginger, those sorts of “warm” spices, as well as some baked bread crust types of vibes from this coffee. This also enhances the lemony notes in the cup and I can feel it in my cheeks and top of tongue, mainly. I haven’t gotten to play with this coffee as much as I’d like as things have been crazy busy at work, but I’m excited to rip some espresso shots of this Kanyege at home and take it to work for my homies there to use on our superautomatic machine (not the best ‘spro, but it only takes the push of a button, so a no-brainer for work!). This coffee has all the likability and drinkability, as well as some of the characateristics like big body and tons of sweetness, of a darker roast coffee, but it’s not a dark roast. Gabe has this Rwandan coffee dialed in to be a sugar bomb and I love it!