Good morning and welcome to today’s review, where I’m checking out this month’s MyCoffeePub subscription coffee, a Guatemalan coffee from Craftwork Coffee Co. Slurp!
CRAFTWORK COFFEE CO. GUATEMALA LOS ANGELES
September 2019’s MyCoffeePub subscription coffee is from Craftwork Coffee Co., a coworking space/coffee shop with three locations in Fort Worth, Texas and a fourth location in Austin. The setup is simple: cool, specialty coffee shop merged with coworking workspaces and conference rooms for mobile professionals. MyCoffeePub featured Craftwork Coffee Co. in October 2018 and at that time I was pretty frustrated by the lack of any information about the coffees Craftwork was roasting, how you can buy them, etc and I have to say that hasn’t changed in the past year. I know you can buy coffee from Craftwork because I have a friend in Dallas who has visited one of their locations and done so, so it may be as simple as they don’t want to get into online sales, which is fair. That being said, having info about their coffee on the website would still be a plus! Craftwork was founded in 2016 and seems to be growing fast, with the Austin location opening since I last wrote about Craftwork a year ago. For those of you who are new to KC Coffee Geek, MyCoffeePub.com is a monthly subscription where a bag of coffee arrives on your doorstep around the 3rd week of the month and you get whatever the coffee of the month is. It’s always a surprise and I’ve partnered with MCP for at least 3-4 years now and every coffee selection has been great. I love the surprise, I love that I receive coffees I often wouldn’t normally pick out for myself and I love the care the guys from MyCoffeePub put into selecting coffees from all around the country!
This morning’s coffee is labeled “Los Angeles Huehuetenango Guatemala” on the Craftwork label and that’s it. Doing a little Google sleuthing, I did find a handful of references to Finca Los Angeles in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, which is owned by Ana Maria Ortega. I’m assuming this is the same “Los Angeles” that Craftwork’s coffee is from. Ana was born at the farm, which was owned by her father, Angel, since the 1950’s. He passed when she was 17 and Ana Maria has managed the farm since then. She grows various varietals and washes the coffee on location, drying them on a huge patio on the property. Finca Los Angeles is about 68 hectares and sits at an altitude of 1800 meters above sea level. Craftwork gives us tasting notes of, “stone fruit, cocoa, juicy” on the label. I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation during brewing. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and the total brew time was 3:00.
With allergy season in full effect for me, my nose isn’t working that great this morning, so I’ll skip the aroma and dive right in! I’m greeted by a medium bodied coffee with sweetness up front and some fruity notes toward the mid sip. I’m getting a light caramel sweetness in the base of this coffee with some hints of brown sugar. In the mid sip there is a lot of fruit coming forward and the cup is bright, but still balanced. I’m getting some apple sweetness and malic acidity in the fruit notes. There is a good amount of citrus coming through that I’m having a tough time nailing down… there’s acidity here that’s lemony, but not quite lemon, and I’m getting a little orange, but not quite orange, either. Usually citrus notes don’t stump me, but this one got me this morning! It leans more in the lemon candy direction, so that’s a safe descriptor for what I’m experiencing, and there is a hint of orange juice in the undertone of this acidity, too. In the early aftertaste between sips I am getting obvious lemon notes and as I linger before my next sip it is more of an orange juicy note, so maybe I’m not as “off” as I thought! When coffee people use “stone fruits” as a descriptor they’re usually talking about peaches or apricots. These notes are subtle in this coffee, for me, but I’m definitely getting an apricot vibe from it. There’s a peach nectar-like sweetness in the mid sip and into the second half of the sip, but that acidity in the cup reminds me of the tartness of apricots, so I’m leaning that way. There is a healthy peach note in the finish and in the aftertaste of the coffee as it cools toward room temp.
All in all, this is a nice coffee! Super easy drinking and really nice flavors to enjoy. It’s balanced and has a satisfying presence on my palate. This is probably a crowd-pleaser at Craftwork’s cafes! Yum!