Good morning and welcome to today’s review! I’m taking a taste of a natural coffee from Fresh Tracks Coffee, their Finca Las Dos Sofias from El Salvador. Thanks for coming along for the ride with me!
Purchase this coffee directly for $15/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Brazil Fazenda Senhor Niquinho
FRESH TRACKS COFFEE EL SALVADOR FINCA LAS DOS SOFIAS
Fresh Tracks Coffee are a relatively new “nano-roaster” that looks to have gotten their start around late 2018. They’re based in Boulder, Colorado and they are taking a bit of a different approach from most other roasters by specializing in natural and honey process coffees. I haven’t really seen this in coffee myself, yet, and I’ll be curious to stay in touch with Fresh Tracks in coming years to see how it works out for them. It makes sense, as naturals and honeys are different to roast from their washed counterparts, and so this type of specialization in coffee may be a trend that Fresh Tracks is on the forefront of (I know that’s probably not great writing, but alas…)
Really quickly, there are two main ways to process coffee: wet (aka washed) and dry (aka natural). Coffee is a fruit, and a coffee cherry is about the same size as a normal grocery store cherry. Most coffee cherries contain two seeds, what we remove, roast, and call coffee beans. In wet processing, coffees are run through a depulping machine to rupture the skins and remove some of the sticky mucilage inside the fruit that clings to the seeds. The rest of this stuff is removed through fermentation in water-filled tanks. Natural coffees are sorted and then laid out in raised mesh beds in the sun to slowly dry and break down still intact, like big raisins. This tends to impart sweetness, body and lots of fruitiness to the seeds inside, that soak up flavors like little sponges. On the negative side, natural process coffees can tend to soak up ferment notes from the breaking down fruit, which I personally like, but to some people taste trashy/garbagey (probably for a similar reason as some people love cilantro while it tastes like soap to others).
This morning’s coffee is a natural process Pacas varietal grown around 1700masl at Finca Las Dos Sofias. This farm is located in the Santa Ana department (state), where El Salvador butts up against Honduras and Guatemala. Don Ramon Valiente planted coffee on this land for the first time about 80 years ago and it is still managed by the Valiente family today. Mario Valiente named the farm Dos Sofias after his two daughters. This is a direct trade certified coffee and Fresh Tracks give us tasting notes of, “Dried fruits, maple syrup, milk chocolate.”
I’m using my standard pourover setup to brew this coffee. That’s a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper using a Kalita 155 filter. I pulse pour through a Melodrip to keep the coffee bed flat and free from agitation and I have to say this morning’s pour was a work of art in that department! LOL This coffee got a 30 second bloom and took 3:13 total to brew.
The aroma from this cup is nice and warm, with hints of maple syrup and dark, dried fruits in the emptied-out Origin vessel (I find the last few drops of coffee in an empty cup or brewing vessel always end up having super concentrated sweet/sugar aromas). As with all coffees, I recommend being patient and starting your tasting once the coffee cools to around 110-112 degrees F (43C). Taking my first sip, this is a medium-heavy bodied coffee and I’m getting sweetness, fruity citrus tones and a decent amount of roastiness from this coffee, although visually I’d call it a “medium” roast level. The sweetness reminds me of a light caramel, but also has a syrupy character, probably aided by the substantial mouthfeel and density it has on my palate. I like Fresh Tracks’ maply syrup descriptor, although I wouldn’t have come to that on my own, so I think I’m getting some auto-suggestion when I read that and think, “Oh yeah, there it is” in the cup, in this case. Nonetheless, it’s a nice, dense sweetness that really anchors this cup and gives it a warm, inviting vibe. In the mid-sip I’m getting most of the fruits from this coffee, which at that warmer 110-ish temp were coming through as citrus, but as the cup cools further, that’s a little less clear. I’m still getting an orange-like, sweet citrus note in the second half of the sip, finish and into the aftertaste, but the initial sense of fruit is more complex in the cooling cup. I’m getting something that reminds me of cranberry, without the tartness, and some raspberry. I’ve been drinking a raspberry-cranberry flavored sparkling water recently that reminds me of this flavor a little bit. There’s a healthy amount of plum in the cup, too. Actually, now that I think of plum, my brain is really liking that comparison, so I think I hit on something, and even though I said there wasn’t much tartness in the cup as it relates to that cranberry flavor I was getting, I am reading just enough to remind me of the tartness I associate with plum skins when eating that fruit.
As the cup cools further I’m getting quite a bit of cream and dairy on the front end, with a slightly lactic sweetness, again, probably from that hint of tartness carrying over from the previous sip. As I’m drinking this coffee that roasty note is staying pretty well hidden, so I’m either attenuating to it or it’s less obvious as the cup cools. I do find it again in the finish and aftertaste, though. This coffee finishes sweet and there is a milk chocolatey tone there with some of the plum and raspberry persisting into the aftertaste. The roasty note doesn’t come in until about 30 seconds or so after each sip, for me. One thing that worries a lot of people about natural coffees is ferment flavor and I don’t get any ferment from this cup. I personally love funky, ferment notes in naturals, but to some people they taste garbagey, but either way, I’m not getting any ferment out of this one.
This is a fantastic coffee! I really like the darker tones it has and it’s a pleasant, easy drinker on the one hand, but full of complexity on the other hand for people who want to try to parse that out. The only “flaw” I am getting is that bit of roastiness, but that’s a very difficult one to work on when roasting… I mean, this IS a roasted seed, so roastiness is almost inevitable, and there are so many variables that can bring it forward or push it back that it becomes a real dance with the roasting machine every batch. That hint of roastiness is certainly far from being a deal-killer for me, and it actually works well with the overall dark character of this particular coffee. Fresh Tracks have really impressed me with this coffee and their current honey process from Brazil that I reviewed recently, too. Keep your eyes on Fresh Tracks and do yourself a favor and order these two coffees from them, you won’t regret it!