Good morning and welcome to today’s review. I’m taking a look at a two-coffee blend called Stable from Traction Coffee Roasters. It’s 10 degrees with snow on the ground outside this morning and this is “blend weather” if I ever saw it!
Purchase this coffee directly for $14/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Sumatra Kerinci
TRACTION COFFEE ROASTERS STABLE
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, 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.”
This morning, I’m checking out one of Traction’s blends, called Stable. Traction’s website includes this definition of stable, “adjective: of an object or structure, not likely to give way or overturn; firmly fixed.” We know it’s a blend of Colombian and Guatemalan coffees, but that’s it as there’s no additional information about the component coffees on Traction’s website. We do get tasting notes of, “red apple, dark chocolate, lemon” for this coffee.
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 a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee during brewing. Including a 30 second bloom, this coffee took 3:50 total to brew. These beans have a solidly medium roast level and were easy to grind, so I am hoping I get some hints of a darker roast on this cold morning because that’s just the mood I’m in for coffee this morning.
Taking a sip, this is a bit on the heavier side of middle-of-the-road medium in terms of body and mouthfeel. Red apple is here in the sweetness and that crisp brightness that comes with sweetened apple juice, and that’s always such a nice, easy, inviting flavor note in coffee. In the second half of the sip I am getting lemon, for sure, with a bit of pithiness, so I’d be so bold as to say this is lemon peel, specifically, in the cup. This is a nice counter to the caramel, syrupy sweetness this coffee has. Without that lemon hit, this coffee would be borderline cloying, so all that sugary sweetness needs a counterbalance to remain stable (see what I did there? LOL). I get a bit of cocoa in the finish and the aftertaste has a bit of a single origin dark chocolate bar vibe to it with all that sweetness and those bright, fruity notes.
For me, blends are all about balance and drinkability. That is really the reason to blend coffees in the first place, bringing different flavors together to contrast and/or complement them with one another. I’m digging Traction’s Stable blend. It’s delicious and easy drinking, both sweet and bright, and it checks all the boxes as to what a pleasant blend should be, for me. It isn’t going to win awards on complexity, but Stable more than makes up for that with drinkability and accessibility. This could be an everyday coffee, especially in the winter time, and I wouldn’t be mad at that!