To celebrate this fine Thursday, I’m taking a taste of a new-to-me Kansas City based brand, Walt’s Coffee Roasters, and their current Guatemalan offering. Let’s dig in!
Purchase this coffee directly for $13.50/12oz ($5 flat shipping or free delivery in KC)
Kansas City Spaces article about Walt’s Coffee Roasters
Kansas City Star article about Eleos Coffee House
WALT’S COFFEE ROASTERS GUATEMALA LA MONTANITA
The breadth and depth of Kansas City’s coffee community still surprises me and I’m knee deep in it everyday! Walt’s Coffee Roasters, a locally based roaster/brand, sent me some coffee recently and I’d not only never had their coffee, but I’d embarassingly never even heard of Walt’s. In researching for this article, I learned about another roaster and cafe in KC that I’d never heard of that seems to be tied into Walt’s in some capacity as I’ll explain in a moment. This has me wondering just how many other cafes and roasters are here in the Paris of the Plains that I don’t know about, and how can this be?! LOL
Walt’s Coffee Roasters is owned by Craig Swanson and before you wonder too much about the name, Craig’s full name is Walter Craig Swanson, but Walt is also his dad’s name and that attributes some extra meaning behind the name of the business. Craig started home roasting about 12 years ago and has moved into the commercial space somewhat more recently, although I couldn’t find a date for when Craig started Walt’s. One notable thing about Walt’s is that Craig donates $3 from every bag sold to a local KC cause. The organizations Walt’s works with are the City Union Mission, Liberty Arts Foundation, Restoration House, Urban Christian Academy and Veterans Community Project. When you buy from Walt’s, you get to choose the organization to gift to and you get a wide choice from the Mission, that helps people without homes, to supporting the arts or veterans, and Restoration House, which helps victims of sex trafficking. Very cool! The label on Walt’s bags says that the coffee is roasted and packaged at Eleos Coffee in Kansas City, MO, which I had never heard of and learned is a coffee shop/ministry here in KC. So, it appears that Craig either has Walt’s coffee contract roasted at Eleos, or is using their equipment, which is a smart move if you’re trying to control costs and have an efficient business. Space is expensive. Roasters are expensive. Roasters in spaces are expensive!
Taking a look at this morning’s coffee, La Montanita is grown in Huehuetenango by Teresa Herrera, who has been farming just two hectares of land for decades. Over the past 10 years, Herrera has focused on specialty coffee and it shows in this bag Walt’s sent me. The varieties in the bag are Bourbon, Typica and Caturra and these are SHB (strictly hard bean, a designation used commonly in Central American coffees) grade beans grown at 1500masl. This is a washed coffee and Walt’s gives us cup characteristics of, “medium body, clean cup has fruity flavors of apple, pear and strawberry” and I would agree on most of this, for sure. I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of coffee to Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. Grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to control the agitation in the brewer. This coffee was taking about 3:15-3:30 including a 30 second bloom to brew.
The aroma from this cup is sweet and has a creamy, dairy-like vibe to it, which I don’t get from the aroma very often, yet here it is! Taking a sip, this coffee has a medium to medium-heavy body with a slick, dairy mouthfeel to it, too. I’m getting caramel sweetness on the low end of this coffee and some nice apple juice sweetness and malic acidity (acids found in apples, pears and other fruits that I find to be “crisp” and “cool” in its character). There is some fresh strawberry in this coffee for me, too, both on the very front of the sip if I hold it in my mouth for a couple seconds and also in the second half of the sip into the finish. The finish is slightly sweet and then turns quite dry on my palate between sips. This coffee has a nice balance. It’s what I would consider a medium roast, and it brings out lots of sweetness while still having plenty of fruitiness to balance that out. I really enjoy Guatemalan coffees, generally, but especially when they are sweet and crisp and super easy-drinking like this La Montanita. This is a great intro to Walt’s Coffee Roasters for me and I can’t wait to share the other two coffees they sent me with you soon! Yum!