Good morning! Need a coffee that is like a Swiss Army knife and works for everything? Usually, you don’t need to look any further than a roaster’s house blend, and that’s definitely the case with this little gem of a selection from Lone Oak Coffee! This is also a double award-winning coffee, so check it out!
Purchase this coffee for $15/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Costa Rica San Antonio | Ethiopia Guji
LONE OAK COFFEE HOUSE BLEND
Lone Oak Coffee is located in Winchester, Virginia, tucked into the Shenandoah Valley about 90 minutes from Washington, DC. Started in 2015 by Sam Kayser, Lone Oak was originally roasting in a tiny space at Hopscotch Coffee and Records. Lone Oak branched off (hee hee) into a 2100 square feet space and have placed highly in a bunch of Golden Bean North America Roasting Competitions and took 9th place in the Specialty Coffee Association’s U. S. Roasters Championships!
This morning, I’m checking out Lone Oak’s House Blend. I have a weird relationship with house blends. I pretty much always like them and find them to be capable, versatile, enjoyable coffees, but at the same time, there’s that part of my mind that associates the phrase “house blend” with “boring.” I don’t know why because they rarely are! It’s weird. I’m weird. There you go, problem solved! Surely, if a roaster is willing to say, “This is the house coffee, it does everything!” then it has to be pretty good. By their very nature, blends tend to be versatile coffees aimed at easy, forgiving brewing and a range of flavors that appeal to the masses. By blending coffees, a roaster can take each component and dial it in by altering the proportion of each component.
In this case, I have no idea what the component coffees are of Lone Oak’s House Blend. Edit: Mexico Chiapas, mostly, with a natural from Brazil and a bit of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe. The website says it has, “slight lemon acidity” and “caramel sweetness” as well as “dominant chocolate flavors” and a “creamy body.” And “piquant maple flavors.” But there’s no mention of the components and, if Lone Oak is like most roasters, those components change with the seasonality of coffee while striving to maintain that consistency expected from a House Blend. I drank this coffee as both pourover and espresso, so let’s look at the pourover first.
I’m using my standard 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. Grinder is a Knock Aergrind. Taking a sip, I get exactly what I expect from a house blend… it’s sweet, mellow and balanced. I’d call this a medium bodied coffee and there is caramel sweetness up front along with a milk chocolate note that runs the length of the sip from beginning to end. I’m picking up some apple notes in this cup as well as a touch of lemony acidity toward the finish and aftertaste of the coffee. There’s a fair amount of nuttiness in this cup, too. Most of the time, nut flavors in coffee are sort of hard for me to parse out. I know what I consider to taste like roasted nuts, but that flavor of “nuttiness” doesn’t often jump out as a particular type of nut, for me. This is a nutty cup, though, in all the best ways! That’s Lone Oak Coffee’s House Blend, folks. Sweet, balanced, enough acidity to give it some depth and interest, emphasis on chocolate and caramel and nuts and not so much on fruit. This is the definition of “house blend” in my mind and it’s a very easy drinking and enjoyable cup in every way. Coffees like this belong in every household for that first cup in the morning or to enjoy after a meal with dessert. Yum!
Since there’s no harm in doing this, I may as well put my official guess as to the components of this coffee to “paper” even though this is practically impossible to do… I’m going to say this is a blend of all washed coffees with a Guatemalan base and some Colombian for the bright side of things. Brazil would make a lot of sense, too, but I’m sticking with Guatemala/Colombia and I’ll see if I can get a ruling from Lone Oak! LOL Edit: just heard back from Lone Oak and this coffee is Mexico Chiapas with Brazil Natural and a bit of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. If I’d taken the time to actually LOOK at the beans I would’ve known about the Ethiopian… you can’t miss those little beans, and that explains the hint of lemon. Damnit.
Now, let’s talk about espresso. It’s funny because the first thing I did with this coffee was use it for espresso, before I knew that this very coffee won bronze medals in this year’s 2018 Golden Bean awards for black espresso as well as for espresso in the milk category! The rules for Golden Bean are quite specific. The espresso category uses 18g of coffee with a target yield of 40-43g of espresso in the cup in 30-40 seconds. The milk-based category is defined as a latte in an 8-oz cup, so it’s the same shot parameters with 6-7oz of milk. I’m deep into a keto diet right now, so no milk for me, although based on how this coffee tastes as straight espresso, it’s a no-brainer that it’s good with milk, too.
I’m using my trusty home setup of a Gaggia Classic that I have pretty well tuned in the 9 bar range for pressure. Naked portafilter with a Decent Espresso 20g basket. I have a matched Decent Espresso tamper that fits the diameter PERFECTLY (58.4 or 58.5mm, I forget which it is) and that tamper is also calibrated to 25lbs of tamping pressure. Grinder is a Rancilio Rocky. I do a quick “WDT” to the coffee in the portafilter and then level it out/distribute with a OCD-style distribution puck thingamajig. Pulling a shot to these exact parameters (18.1g in, 40.7g out in 30 seconds) I get a nice crema, good body, bittsersweet chocolate, sweet lemon candy acidity and a lot of green apple. Yum! I was finding this coffee shines with a slightly tighter ratio, too, which adds even thicker shaving cream like crema and a lot of syrupiness to the shot. Man, so good!