Good morning! I’m taking a look at November’s coffee pick for the MyCoffeePub subscribers, a single origin selection from Guatemala roasted by Hardy Coffee Co. in Omaha, Nebraska. Slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17/12oz
MYCOFFEEPUB NOV. 2018: HARDY COFFEE CO. GUATEMALA GRAN QUEZTAL
Really devoted readers will notice that I missed October’s MyCoffeePub review, a coffee from Ceremony (a roaster I’ve wanted to try out forever! So bummed!) but the Gods of Shipping had other ideas for my coffee than getting it into my hands. So, I was over the moon when I saw my mystery package arrive from this month’s MyCoffeePub. Tearing open the package I was happy to see Hardy Coffee Co. from Omaha, Nebraska on the label! I was introduced to Hardy through the MyCoffeePub subscription, along with tons of other great roasters over the years, and I’ve always had nice coffees from this roaster! To tell you a little about Hardy, it started out as a small bakery founded by Autumn Pruitt, née Hardy, and her husband, Luke, in 2010. They were renting some space in the Aromas Coffeehouse on the corner of 11th and Jones for you Omahanians. They purchased Aromas a year and half later and have since opened two more places in Omaha. In 2015 they branded their own coffee roasting operation under Autumn’s maiden name of Hardy and then brought in the bakery and coffeeshops under than unified name, too.
This month’s coffee is Gran Queztal from Guatemala. My one gripe with Hardy is that they don’t have much to read for us coffee geeks on their website, and this coffee eluded my search capabilities on Google, too. All I can tell you is that this is a washed coffee from the Huehuetenango region of Guatemala. Huehuetenago is a non-volcanic region of Guatemala and remains the highest and driest with currents of hot air sweeping up from the plains of Oaxaca, Mexico. This creates microclimates that can protect coffee plantings up to 2000masl. Because of the remoteness and ruggedness of Huehuetenango, most producers also process their own coffee, but I don’t have any producer info or additional variety info from Hardy at this time. They did supply us with tasting notes, however, of “amaretto, cacao, malt.”
I’m using a bit of a different process for pourovers these days in order to test some new equipment. For this coffee I went back to the notNeutral Gino and Kalita 185 filter because it gives me more room to use the Melodrip I’m testing out. I’m sticking with a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water and my Knock Aergrind is still doing the heavy lifting. This coffee was coming in around 2:45 give or take a little with the bloom and fussing with the Melodrip stir stick to make sure all the grounds are evenly wet.
Taking a sip, I am greeted by a light bodied coffee with a lot of flavors hitting my tongue all at once. A lot of coffees I review have this distinct sort of “structure” to them where it develops different flavors up front, in the middle of the sip and toward the finish, but this one is hitting me with everything it has all at once, right out of the gates! If I try to slow things down (and this is happening naturally as I take more sips and get into this coffee more) and concentrate more on what I’m experiencing, I’m getting some light syrupy sweetness up front. It’s honeyed and has a touch of a thinner maple syrup vibe to me, too, although I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily getting a lot of maple syrup flavors out of it. Although, now that I wrote that, of course I’m getting some maple notes in the finish, as the mind wants to do when it comes to flavors and association/suggestion! LOL The mid sip has some brightness and more acidity to it, although I wouldn’t call this an acidic coffee by any stretch. It’s very balanced. I’m getting red apple juice and a little green apple zing from the malic acid in this cup and it works well with that sweetness, enhancing and highlighting it. As all that apple goodness mellows out into the finish, there is a hint of nuttiness and some spices and it’s reminding me of the flavors of the upcoming Christmas holidays… nutmeg, cinnamon, that sort of thing. Appropriate for a roaster that started out as a bakery! The finish is just a tiny bit on the dry side and I get an aftertaste that has an estery hint to it that reminds me of the aftertaste of bananas. This is subtle and I’ve picked this up in another coffee I used the Melodrip with, so I either have bananas on the brain or this device may be pulling out some esters I’ve not noticed before?
This is a nice, mellow cup. Even with Third Wave Water, which tends to brighten coffees up quite a bit, this Gran Queztal retains nice balance and lots of sweetness. It has good complexity to look for if the drinker wants, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with that complexity, either, so for those drinkers who want this to be a nice, easy drinking, sweet Guatemalan coffee, they can have that experience, too. Yum! A great pick for cold mornings from the MyCoffeePub and Hardy crews!