Good morning and welcome to today’s review! I’m taking a first sip of Open Seas Coffee Roasters, and it’s a variety I’ve never had, too, called Purple Caturra. Let’s dive right into these open seas!
Cached listing for this coffee (no longer available)
Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia Instagram
OPEN SEAS COFFEE ROASTERS FINCA MONTEBLANCO
Open Seas Coffee Roasters was founded in Stevensville, Maryland, across the Chesapeake Bay east of Anapolis, close to three years ago. Open Seas was founded and is owned by Bryce Roszell and being located on an island certainly informed the roastery’s name. Bryce got into coffee while living in Laos, and as a small roaster, he is able to find small, interesting lots like this morning’s coffee.
This morning’s coffee is part of a very small lot of coffee that consisted of just 15 bags (the 70mg variety!) from producer Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia. Rodrigo is a third generation coffee grower and this microlot is a Purple Caturra variety grown at Finca Monteblanco in Huila, Colombia. Coffee grows at 1730masl there and not only is this coffee an unusual varietal, but it’s also a natural process coffee, which in my experience is a rarity in Colombia, where washed coffees are king. Natural coffees are picked, sorted and then dried with the coffee cherry whole and intact. They dry like big raisins and this imparts a lot of fruitiness to the seeds inside, what we call coffee “beans.” Colombian coffees are most commonly “washed,” meaning the skins are ruptured and the seeds are removed and then dried, so natural processing is somewhat rare in Colombia. Open Seas recommends Chemex for this coffee and gives us tasting notes of, “berry, Concord grape, cinnamon and cream in a clean delicate cup.” Unfortunately, this being such a small batch for Open Seas means it sold out, which is a bummer. Being a special coffee, this coffee was also offered in a special bag, designed by Katie Abro. The bag is so good!
I was surprised by these beans because they are BIG, first of all (had to take a second look at the bag and make sure they weren’t Pacamara, which is another varietal with huge beans), and at first glance they looked like a dark roast, but I quickly noticed how dry they look (as opposed to the sheen of oil or the pools of oil present in an actual dark roast). That must be the “purple” in Purple Caturra! The beans have this beautiful, deep color that is definitely purple and not the reddish tinge a lightly roasted natural usually has. They look dark as a result, but this was a light roast, for sure. I’m using my standard pourover method to brew this coffee, which is 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 I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee. This cup got a 35 second bloom and the total brew time, including the bloom, was 3:05.
This cup has a nice aroma, reminding of me grape juice and berry jam. Taking a sip I’m greeted by a juicy, bright, sweet, fruity tidal wave of flavor that washes over my entire palate! This is a medium to medium-light bodied coffee but the flavors are so intense that it’s hard to separate the body and mouthfeel from that wall of flavor that is a mile high. This coffee is a gulper, so I have to slow down drinking it and really concentrate to separate all these flavors. This is a juicy coffee, which adds to that mouthfeel experience. Juicy coffees attack your taste buds and it feels like the coffee is squeezing your salivary glands and wringing them out, causing salivation and a “wetness” in your mouth separate from the coffee itself. This really encourages you to take another sip, and another, which is why juicy coffees are often finished before you even realized you started them! There is a light caramel tone to the sweetness in the base of this coffee, but the star of this show is the fruit. There is grape in here for sure and I’m also getting mango and tropical fruit notes as well as something in the range of strawberry, but not quite strawberry itself. A fresh, bright berry note, but not blueberry for sure, raspberry and blackberry are both out…. strawberry is definitely the closest and I do get some actual strawberry in the finish and aftertaste of this coffee, too. The acidity in this cup is interesting and reminds me of that acidity and tartness I get from pineapple, so it’s really tropical tasting. It’s bright and refreshing, but not harsh, and it gives a high ceiling to this cup. I am getting hints of cinnamon in the second half of the sip right before the finish and this adds complexity and dimension to this coffee and works surprisingly well with the other flavors in this cup. It’s not a pure cinnamon hand grenade like that anaerobic Costa Rican I tasted from Manzanita recently, but there is definitely cinnamon in the cup. This coffee has a nice, sweet finish and a long aftertaste of strawberry, pineapple and a dusting of cinnamon that is really pleasant. For a natural, the ferment is low, if present at all.
What a killer coffee! It’s no wonder it sold out so fast, being such a limited offering and being so dang good! When it was available, Open Seas was selling this Purple Caturra for $16/8oz which is not too bad for a rare, special coffee like this. Hats off to Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia and Finca Monteblanco, as well as Open Seas for this amazing coffee! I have a trip taking me out of town for the next 5 days, and I can’t wait to get home and rip into these other bags Open Seas sent!