Good morning and welcome to today’s review. I’m checking out another coffee from Ohio’s Flatlands Coffee, this time their natural from Brazil that they call, “Literally the best Brazilian coffee we’ve ever had.” Slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $20/250g (8.8oz)
Other reviews in this series: Ethiopia Limu 008/3A
Coffee Brew Guides interview with Ben Vollmar
FLATLANDS COFFEE BRAZIL FAZENDA SANTUARIO SUL
Flatlands Coffee appears to have gotten their start around late 2014 with a successful Kickstarter campaign (for all you Kickstarters out there, though, their first one didn’t fly, so be persistent if you have a good idea!).They started off with an emphasis on barista skills and being a multiroaster shop, carrying and serving coffee from other roasters. Co-founder, Ben Vollmar, had previous experience in coffee, wanting to own his own shop since high school. Ben’s wife, interior designer Cassy Vollmar, handled the design aspects of their shop, which they opened in Bowling Green, OH in 2015. The space has a sleek, modern look juxtaposing the 200 year old bricks on the walls. As with a lot of multiroaster shops, Flatlands developed their own preferences and, today, roasts their own coffee in a “Nordic” style (which is light) according to their website.
This morning’s coffee, touted as, “Literally the best Brazilian coffee we’ve ever had,” was a Carmo Best Cup competition winner from Fazenda Santuario Sul. This farm is located in the coffee growing region of Minas Gerais near Carmo de Minas. It’s a Yellow Bourbon variety grown at 1380-1430masl, which is quite high for Brazil. This is a natural process coffee and a 2018 harvest imported by Cafe Imports. The farm grows 30 varieties of coffee on 80 planted hectares. Flatlands give us tasting notes of, “Chocolate, vanilla wafer, macadamia, peach.”
I’m using my standard pourover setup for this coffee, which is a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with a Kalita 155 filter. My grinder for pourovers is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the brew bed. This coffee was quite hard in the grinder and quite dense in the brewer, which is a bit unusual for a Brazilian coffee. I did a 30-second bloom and the total coffee brew time, bloom included, took a little under 4:00.
The dry fragrance of the beans in this bag were pure cocoa and chocolate, so I am not surprised to see that descriptor in the mix, although a lot happens between bean fragrance and the brewed cup! The aroma from the immediately brewed cup has a lot of raisin, to me, and in the cooler cup I am getting a lot of peanut butter, which is a big surprise! Peanuty notes can be a feature of an under-roasted, underdeveloped coffee, but I’m not getting any of that here, just peanut butter in the aroma! Taking a sip, I am immediately getting that macadamia. I think this is the first coffee I’ve tasted where I can really taste macadamia, even though it’s a somewhat frequently used descriptor in coffees. This one has it in spades, for me, and I’m getting a lot of sugar cookie notes in here, too, that accompany the macadamia absolutely perfectly! Flatlands mentions that, “the flavor is surprisingly different than what we’d expect from Brazil and surprising as a natural processed coffee” and I’ll agree with both of those counts wholeheartedly. There is very little of the fruitiness I generally get from naturals and, even though Brazilian naturals are a lot less fruit forward, as a rule, than an African natural, there’s still very little of that here. There’s a bit of honey to the sweetness of the base of this cup and I’m getting just a hint of tropical fruits in the higher notes of the coffee, offering good balance. These tropicals are subtle and, again, this is not a fruit-forward cup. In the second half of the sip and especially in the aftertaste, this tropical note morphs into a white peach flavor that is killer, but subtle. This is a medium bodied coffee that is quite slick on my palate and seems almost creamy in its texture, which is a great accompaniment to that macadamia cookie note, not to mention the peach, giving it a bit of a peaches and cream vibe. As the cup gets toward room temperature, my last couple sips are loaded with a ton of peach and cream sweetness. Wow!
This is an excellent coffee. In a blind test I’d never call it a natural. Anyone who steers clear of naturals because of ferment notes hitting them the wrong way has nothing to fear with this cup. It’s sweet, balanced, super accessible and a pleasure to drink. It doesn’t fit the mold, in any way, for what this coffee is “supposed to be” and I love that about it! Flatlands is 2/2 so far with me!