No Coast Roast is one of Kansas City’s latest additions to our coffee roasting community and I loved their signature Crown Town coffee from Colombia, so let’s check out Pura Vida, a Costa Rican, this morning! Slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17/12oz.
Other reviews in this series: Crown Town (Colombia)
NO COAST ROAST PURA VIDA
No Coast Coffee Roasters, or as they prefer to be called, No Coast Roast, is one of Kansas City’s latest additions to the coffee roasting community, which is prolific, here. No Coast was founded by Max Bellmann, who is currently No Coast’s roaster, packer, shipper, accountant, salesman, and every other job that a roasting company needs to run! Like a lot of coffee roasters, Max started off doing small batches in his garage for friends and family and he branded the No Coast moniker in 2016. In the last handful of months, Max has moved out of his garage and into a facility in Overland Park, KS and threw a Loring roaster in there, which could handle up to 10,000 pounds of coffee per month once the need is there! For now, Max has no designs on a cafe space, he just wants to focus on roasting and getting his coffee out to people who will enjoy it whether through wholesale accounts or by the bag from the website or in stores.
I’m taking a look at No Coast Roast’s Pura Vida this morning (and if you notice the date on the bag, please realize I’m writing this from my notes that I took almost two months ago… getting caught up on actually turning notes into reviews, getting photos, posting everything, etc… so I’m taking a little artistic license with the use of “this morning” LOL). Max says that this coffee embodies Costa Rica’s “pura vida” motto, meaning “pure life” or living life to the fullest with “notes of lemon and caramel.” This coffee is a mix of Caturra and Catuai varietals grown around 1500masl in the Tarrazu region, famed for its coffee production. This is a washed coffee and Max calls this a “medium” roast and I would agree, at least from my initial visual inspection of the beans. Pura Vida promises notes of lemon and caramel, which sounds perfect right about now!
I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in Trinity Origin dripper with a Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind for pourovers and I have pulse pouring through a Melodrip, which is supposed to control the pour in a way that creates more flavor and a cleaner cup with better extraction. I did a 40 second bloom on this coffee and my total time, including that bloom, was 3:00.
Taking a sip, I’m getting a solidly medium-bodied coffee that strikes me as “balanced and well-behaved” right out of the gate. There is a medium-caramel sweetness to the base of this coffee and that sweetness is countered by a soft, candy-like lemon acidity that nicely balances it and also brightens up the cup. I’m getting a fairly nutty vibe from this coffee, too, although I can’t really specify what kind of nut. There is a nuttiness that works great with the caramel sweetness, though. I know repeating “balanced” and “super balanced” and “whoa! Balance!” isn’t that impressive to any of my fellow cork sniffers who may be reading this, but as un-inspiring as that may seem on face value, it’s a noble trait in coffee. Not every coffee needs to be freaky and weird. Balance in coffee gives a nice yin and yang between brightness and sweetness and, just as importantly, balanced coffees are more accessible and easy to drink and those are traits I love in the cup. Pura Vida is delicious and it’s a nice companion to the other No Coast Roast coffee I reviewed recently, Crown Town, which is their Colombian. Crown Town was a little brighter, had some more complexity, some baking spices in the mix, hints of apricot, and yet retained the easy drinking qualities pura vida has. This could easily be a daily drinker and whoever you were serving Pura Vida to would be right happy!