Good morning and welcome to today’s review. I have a Mexican selection from Flatlands Coffee, who have proven to be a top notch roaster in my book! Let’s get right to it…
Purchase this coffee directly for $18.50/250g (8.8oz)
Other reviews in this series: Ethiopia Limu Lot 008 | Brazil Fazenda Santuario | Colombia La Union
FLATLANDS COFFEE MEXICO EL TRIUNFO
Flatlands Coffee is based in Bowling Green, Ohio and got their start in late 2014. Ben Vollmar, and his wife, Cassy, opened a shop in 2015. As an interior designed, Cassy also designed the interior, which looks warm and inviting, yet modern. The early emphasis of the cafe was on training top baristas (in 2019, they had multiple baristas qualify to comptete in the US Barista Championships) and sourcing the best coffees from American roasters. Over time, Flatlands developed a taste of what they like in coffee and started roasting their own. This run of coffees has been my first taste of Flatlands Coffee and it has been exceptional, so they have quickly risen to the “buy anything from them and it will be good” status here at KC Coffee Geek!
This morning’s coffee is Flatlands’ Mexico El Triunfo. This is another one sources from Red Fox Coffee Merchants and it comes from various smallholder farmers in the Chiapas region of Mexico working through the CESMACH cooperative there. This lot is a mix of Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Costa Rica and Rancho Bonito varieties grown at 1300-1650masl and this is a washed coffee. CESMACH operates at the base of Jaltenango in the Sierra Madre mountain range, with many of their farmers working in the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, an important protected area necessitating use of clean water management, organic farming practices and use of shade. Flatlands says this is “one of the most crowd-pleasing coffees in our coffeeshop” and gives us tasting notes of “peanut butter, snicker doodle, baked apple.”
I’m using my usual pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin with a Kalita 155 filter. I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation during brewing and my grinder for pourovers is a Knock Aergrind. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and the total brew time was a relatively zippy 3:00.
The aroma from this coffee is definitely peanut buttery, which can sometimes be a worry because peanut butter is a flavor that can be associated with under-roasted (like, WAY under roasted) coffee. That being said, I have total faith in Flatlands that this is not under roasted and tasting it confirms that! This is a medium-heavy bodied coffee with quite a bit going on for me. There is a caramel sweetness anchoring this coffee on the low end, and there is a slight hint of peanut butter in the cup, like an undertone (or overtone? Who knows, either way, it’s there but not front and center). I’m getting some melon sweetness and fruitiness in this cup, leaning more toward honeydew, but there are definite hits of watermelon in this coffee, too, for me. I’m even getting watermelon in the aftertaste. In the second half of the sip I would say this melon note, which is quite apparent to my palate, takes on more of a pickled melon rind character, with a touch of tartness hitting my cheeks and the sides of my tongue. In this second half of the sip I’m also getting some spiciness, more peppery than the baking spices like cinnamon or nutmeg that I get from a lot of coffees. Now that I have melon on my mind, that has taken a big front seat for this coffee and that’s interesting since it’s not anywhere in Flatlands’ description and I often don’t find melon in coffees where it does make it into the description! The mind is an interesting thing! This coffee has a sweet, cool, melon-juicy finish with a dash of pepper in the aftertaste. Now that I have watermelon and honeydew kicking through my head I’m getting minimal peanut butter notes in the flavor, but it’s quite apparent in the aftertaste if I wait about 30 seconds or so after a sip.
This is a cool coffee! I have a special affinity for Mexican coffees because when I first got into roasting a handful of years ago, the first coffee that I thought was worth sharing with others was a Mexican coffee from Oaxaca and people I gave it to at least told me it tasted good! LOL Mexican coffees tend to be pretty simple and low in complexity, but this one is quite complex and has a fair amount going on. Peanut butter, watermelon, honeydew and black pepper doesn’t sound like a winning combination, but it works in this coffee and I’m realling enjoying its complexity as it develops and opens up as it cools. Of the four coffees I’ve sampled from Flatlands this Fall this is probably the most interesting/different/unusual, but it’s still easily drinkable and perfectly accessible. I’m really impressed!