Good morning and welcome to today’s review! I’m taking a first look at another new-to-me roaster, Traction Coffee Roasters, and their current Sumatran offering. Get stoked!
Purchase this coffee directly for $19/12oz
TRACTION COFFEE ROASTERS SUMATRA KERINCI
Traction Coffee Roasters is a fairly new (their Instagram went active showing posts of their roaster arriving in October 2018) roasting company based in Colorado (Boulder or Longmont area by my guess). Traction started as a conversation among friends while out on their mountain bikes, and eventually the idea grew legs. Co-founded by Shawn Neer, Mike Murfitt and Noe Lopez (who is from Springfield, Missouri more in my neck of the woods), Traction is named for that necessary thing you need when on a bike, and their goal is to, “help you get a grip, move forward and gain Traction.”
The first Traction coffee I’m trying out is their Kerinci from Sumatra. This coffee comes from the Kerinci Valley near the volcano, Mount Kerinci. This is also butted up against Sumatra’s largest national park, which is apparently home to more tigers than Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China combined! Traction recommends this coffee as espresso or pour over and gives us tasting notes of, “Fudge, graham cracker, grapefruit.” These are big beans and they grind really nice and easy in my Knock Aergrind, so it’s a well-developed roast that I’d probably call “medium,” personally.
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. My grinder is the aforementioned 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 3:20.
The aroma from the Trinity was great, with big notes of caramel and molasses hitting me on this cold, dark Kansas City morning. Just what I need! Taking a sip, this is medium-heavy to heavy bodied coffee and it’s both intensely sweet and brighter than I expected based on the aroma. On the front end of the sip I’m getting a lot of caramel and brown sugar sweetness, then there is a bunch of citrus happening shortly after. The bright notes in this coffee come in like a wave, with a bit of lemon leading the charge, then as the wave is cresting I’m getting pink grapefruit without the bitterness or tartness I’d associate with grapefruit and a bit of orange in there to round the acidity out and sweeten it up. The grapefruit is more like a grapefruit candy or grapefruit juice than the raw fruit… it tastes more like grapefruit does with a whole lot of sugar added, and that works for me this morning! That citrus wave rides into the finish, which is sweet, and well into the aftertaste, which is sugary and citrusy and reminds me of just having finished a citrus-flavored hard candy. As the cup cools I’m getting some incense and wood (cedar-esque) undertones in this coffee, especially if I agitate the coffee in my mouth and get some retronasal action going (agitate coffee in closed mouth and puff air out of your nose. Don’t try this unless you’re alone!). That hit of incense really adds a nice layer to this coffee for me, turning it from something that is fairly one-dimensional (but a very good dimension, at that!) to something with more complexity and interest for my palate. Sumatra is one of those origins, for me, like Brazil… Faced with a selection of coffees at a roaster I will never grab for one of those origins on my own volition, but ironically I always like them when I drink them! This Kerinci from Traction is great. It’s heavy, sweet, bright and has that cool incense/cedar/wood note that works perfectly in the context of this cup. As a pourover, I’m super happy with this coffee!
As espresso, this coffee is really similar to what I was tasting in the pourover version. I ended up enjoying a lungo style pull with 18g in and about 45g out in 25 seconds, which is sort of a weird shot, but it worked! Sweet, balanced, that sweet grapefruit candy is still there and I also got some cherry juice and a bit of spiciness or pepperiness out of this coffee. Super good!
