Happy Monday! Let’s talk a little about travel and check out a fresh Kenyan coffee from my new friends at Joe Bean! Slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $18/12oz.
JOE BEAN KENYA KAVUTIRI
Last month a work trip for a conference in the Finger Lakes region of New York had me flying through Rochester, NY, and, as we do, I planned out some coffee stops before I left town for my final destination. A post on Reddit had lots of people mentioning Joe Bean, who I’ve followed casually on Instagram (along with 2,000 other roasters and cafes) for a few years, so this was my first stop. I reached out to the gang at Joe Bean and what I thought would be a quick visit turned into an hour or two spent with several members of the Joe Bean team, tasting coffee, doing a cupping, chatting with their roaster, etc. and it was fantastic! It was Midwest-level hospitality and that’s saying a lot! They recently moved into a new location that combines their roasting operation, packaging/shipping and a cafe. Joe Bean has two lines of coffee, one branded as Joe Bean and the other as Fabricator, which is more intended for contract roasting or for shops that want to wholesale a non-Joe Bean-labeled product. I have to say, I really, really love Joe Bean’s modern aesthetic on their bags. The fronts are super clean and minimal, yet inviting, while the label on back has all the pertinent info. Dena, roaster Janine and Adam behind the bar made me feel right at home and instead of posting my own pictures, you really should just take a visit to their Instagram because that does a much better job of showing their place (and people) off!
When I left Joe Bean they gifted me a bag of this coffee, which they are very proud of, their Kenya Kavutiri. Kavutiri is one of the oldest washing stations operating in Kenya, built in the 1960’s. Kavutiri collects and processes coffee from over 1,000 farmers in the Embu, Kianjokomo and Katuriri regions in the foothills of Mt. Kenya. Coffee grows around 1750 meters above sea level there and this is labeled as SL28, the classic Kenyan varietal. Of course, this is a washed coffee as most from Kenya are. Joe Bean gives us tasting notes of, “Raspberry, pomegranate, lime, watermelon” for this coffee. Joe Bean prides themselves on sourcing their coffee and handing over the best possible raw materials to Janine’s roasting abilities. I had this coffee while I was at the cafe, so I already know it’s awesome, but let’s see what I can do with it…
For my cup this morning I’m using my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and to keep my coffee bed nice and agitation-free, I pulse pour through a Melodrip, which I love using! This coffee got a 30 second bloom and the total time for the brewing, including the bloom, was 3:05.
The aroma from this coffee has a lot of lime in it for me with a little floral hint in there, too. Taking a sip, I’m greeted by a medium-light coffee that is bright, but clearly balanced. This is a juicy coffee, with big flavors, but they all work nicely together. That lime from the aroma is still here, and I’m getting a serious watermelon vibe from this coffee, even though I’m not getting a ton of watermelon flavors, per se. There’s a cool, fresh character to this coffee that reminds me of watermelon, if that makes any sense, and I do get some watermelon rind notes in the finish and aftertaste, which I think is where a lot of this “feeling” is coming from. There’s a hint of raspberry underlying this cup, and like with the watermelon, it’s not overtly RASPBERRY! but more subtle than that while still being a fresh, big flavor. The lime comes in during the second half of the sip and sort of washes over my entire palate, adding to that juicy feeling of this coffee. I know Janine, Joe Bean’s roaster, was quite proud of this coffee from my conversation with her, and it makes sense because this makes for a phenomenal cup! While I was at the cafe they made me a shaken version of this coffee, too, which I’m not exactly sure how they did it, but I think they made a concentrated pourover and then shook it in a cocktail shaker to aerate it (they may have done that with an espresso base, though, too, I just wasn’t paying attention… it ended up being a big glass of coffee, though, which is why I think it started as a pourover). The “shakerato” (what I’ve seen this type of thing called in Italy) was fantastic and had a lot of the same notes, only in cold coffee form.
I walked out of Joe Bean super-caffeinated and so pleased to have made another personal connection with a coffee company that turned out to be about way more than “just” coffee, although they’re crushing that game, too, of course! If you ever find yourself in Rochester, definitely make it a priority to stop by and visit!