Happy Thursday! In celebration of this auspicious day (I mean, we’re upright, so let’s celebrate!), I have a fine Burundi coffee from the good folks at Manzanita Roasting Company, so let’s check it out!
Purchase this coffee for $18/12oz.
Other coffees in this series: Spring Blend
MANZANITA ROASTING CO. BURUNDI LONG MILES PROJECT RED HONEY
Let’s get something obvious out of the way, right away, about this review… it’s a coffee review and not a honey review! LOL I’ll talk more about what earns “honey” coffees that name, but this is definitely a story about coffee (and people), not the fruits of bees’ labor! Manzanita Roasting Co. is one of my favorite roasters, located in San Diego County in California. Roasting since about 2015, Weston and Samantha Nawrocki have been killing it, picking great coffees and doing them justice with artful roasting. Weston and Samantha met through their mutual love of food and wine (Weston is a sommelier and chef and Samantha has spent her life working in her family’s business, Bernardo Winery, which has been in the family for over 125 years!) and directed their passion into this coffee project. They’ve sent me a lot of coffee over the years to try out and share with you, dear readers, and it’s always awesome.
So, it’s double-great that the Nawrockis have teamed up with Ben and Kristy Carlson of the Long Miles Project. Ben and Kristy moved to Burundi several years ago, have had to fled during worse-than-usual civil wars, and have been raising their family there while working hand in hand with farmers to improve their coffee, to demand higher prices, and improve the quality of life in what is one of the poorest countries on Earth. They have a pretty amazing story and I’ve linked to some things you can look at to get WAY more info on this incredible couple.
Now, about this coffee… I had this as part of the Spring Blend I reviewed recently, but this is my first taste of this one by itself. This is a Bourbon variety grown and processed in the Gaharo Hill region of Burundi. Altitude for coffee is around 1960 meters above sea level and this is a “red honey” process coffee. To start with, coffee is a fruit that is about the size of a cherry or large grape and has two seeds (usually) inside. These seeds are what we roast and call coffee “beans.” There are a variety of ways to process coffee cherries to get the seeds out for roasting. At the macro level, there are two main ways: wet and dry processing, or washed and natural, respectively. Natural or dry processed coffees use minimal water and the cherries are laid out, whole and intact, on raised mesh beds to dry slowly in the sun, like big raisins. This tends to impart sweetness, fruitiness and body into the seeds (beans), but sometimes results in some fermenty, funky notes that some people love (like me) and others don’t. In the washing process, the cherries are ruptured and the skins and goopy, sugary mucilage (often called coffee “honey”) is removed through fermentation in big water vats. Washed coffees are often “cleaner” tasting and may have more clarity than the same coffee done with a natural process. In between these two main types of coffee processing are a variety of methods, often referred to as “honey” processing. In these methods, the cherry skins are ruptured and removed with a depulper, and some, but not all, of the mucilage is removed. Instead of going into fermentation tanks, though, like a washed coffee, these so-called honey process coffees are then laid out on the raised beds to dry. So, they get a little bit of the best of both methods and honey coffees tend to have more fruitiness and sweetness than their washed counterparts, but usually avoid any funk that may come with natural processing. In the coffee world, colors are associated with honey processing, too, so yellow honey coffees have the most mucilage removed and are the closest to being washed, red honeys have a medium amount of mucilage left behind and black honeys have a lot of goop left on them and sometimes taste more like naturals.
The aroma from this coffee is a delight, and I get brown sugar and raisins, a very “warm” and pleasant aroma to my brain, at least! Taking a sip, this is a medium to medium-heavy bodied coffee with a lot of sweetness right up front. That brown sugar sweetness comes through loud and clear, followed immediately by what tastes to me like golden raisins. This raisin note is sweet and sugary but also has just a hint of tartness and brightness to balance all that sweetness out, too. In the mid-sip, this raisiny flavor becomes more plummy and definitely finishes more as a stewed or cooked plum flavor, for me. The finish on this coffee is sweet as can be and nudges up against the border with being cloying, and leaves a nice raisin and plum aftertaste with very little bitterness on my palate in preparation for the next sip. As the cup cools, I get some lightly floral notes out of this coffee, too. I’m awful at identifying specific flowers outside of roses and jasmine, which I have tasted in coffee before, so I’m not going to make an effort here, but there is a floral note, nonetheless. Even though I focused on the sweetness of this cup, and it is a sugar bomb, which I absolutely love, there is good balance to it from the raisins and plum notes and this is a super easy drinking coffee because of it. Another awesome coffee from my friends at Manzanita Roasting Co.!