Good morning, and welcome to today’s review. I’m taking a look at Bespoken Coffee Roasters’ Linda Vista, a black honey coffee from Guatemala. Let’s dive right in!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17.50/12oz SOLD OUT
Other reviews in this series: Guatemala Octavio Herrera
BESPOKEN COFFEE ROASTERS LINDA VISTA
Last week I shared Bespoken Coffee Roasters’ Octavio Herrera with you, which was a fantastic entry into trying Bespoken’s coffee for the first time here on KC Coffee Geek. This morning I have another Guatemalan selection for you, Linda Vista, which, unfortunately, appears to have just sold out on Bespoken’s website. Ack! Bespoken Coffee Roasters was started by Collin and Ann Schneider around 2014 in Corvallis, Oregon. A short time later, the couple started Tried & True, a cafe, with some partners, and today, Bespoken is roasted on site at Tried & True’s second location in town. Like a tailor makes a bespoke suit, the folks at Bespoken Coffee Roasters believe the same patience, precision and skill should be applied to coffee, and I agree!
This morning’s coffee is from Finca Linda Vista in the Santa Rosa region of Guatemala, where coffee grows from 1450masl to a whopping 2100 meters above sea level! Linda Vista produces about 3,000 bags of coffee per year (meaning, the 70kg size, not the 12 ouncers you and I buy!). This morning’s coffee is a microlot of Sarchimore, Pacas and Costa Rica varietals that is produced using the “honey process.” In coffee processing, “naturals” are dried with the coffee cherry whole and intact, slowly drying in the sun like big raisins, which imparts a lot of fruitiness to the seeds (what we call coffee beans) inside the cherries. The other main type of processing is “washed” or “wet process” and in this processing, the cherries are run through a machine that ruptures their skins, then the sticky, sugary mucilage surrounding the coffee beans is removed and fermented off in washing tanks. This tends to produce “cleaner” tasting coffees with less fermentation notes than naturals tend to have. In between naturals and washed coffees are “honey” process coffees, which are often called “pulped naturals” and a host of other names. In this method, the cherry skins are ruptured and removed, but some amount of pulp and mucilage is left behind on the beans instead of being washed and fermented off. Then the beans are laid out on beds to dry. This can offer a cleaner cup that still has more body and fruitiness, so it’s an attempt to get the best of both washed and natural processes. Honey coffees are often referred to as “yellow,” “red” or “black.” It has long been thought that the amount of mucilage or “honey” left on the beans dictates the amount of fermentation, with yellow being the lightest and black being the heaviest, but it also appears the amount of oxygen the beans are exposed to has a lot to do with what happens during honey processing. In any case, Bespoken says this process yields coffee that is, “Heavy and intensely sweet with tropical fruits, berries and chocolate.” Yum!
I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. Grinder is an Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to limit agitation. This coffee ran fast with a 35 second bloom and a total brew time of 2:35, including the bloom.
Taking a sip, I can tell I’ve underextracted it a little bit, but I’m still getting nice flavors. “Tropical” is a good descriptor for the overall vibe from this cup. The way I’ve prepped this coffee, it’s a light-bodied cup with honey sweetness in the base and sweetness that is fruity and tropical. I’m getting hints of mango and a bit of pineapple without any of the tartness that comes with the latter. There’s a bit of white grape soda sweetness here for me, too, which works really nicely with these other flavors. There’s a subtle floral note in the second half of the sip and I’m getting a little something that reminds me of a berry that lands between raspberry and blackberry in terms of flavor. This coffee finishes sweet and has a long, lingering aftertaste with hints of those berries and lots of pineapple in it, for me. This is another really nice coffee from Bespoken and I’m sorry I didn’t get to my review before they just sold out of it! I definitely need to tighten up my burrs for this coffee and slow it down. I usually come in around 3:15-3:30 for most coffees, which seems like a good range for most coffees in the Trinity Origin brewer, but I had been futzing around with my Aergrind before making this cup this morning and it ran a little faster than expected. I think a longer brew time will add some body, intensity and sweetness, although even at 2:30 for this coffee it’s fantastic!