Good morning and welcome to today’s review! Pair Cupworks sent the last of their washed Guatemalan to me to try out and I can’t wait to share it with you. Yes, this means it’s sold out, but the link below takes you to their current offerings and you can never go wrong with Pair’s roasting!
Other reviews in this series: Natural Process Geisha (Colombia)
PAIR CUPWORKS WASHED PROCESS GUATEMALA
Kimhak Em, one half of Pair Cupworks, sent me the last of a couple of their favorite coffees from the tail end of 2019. I absolutely love their whimsical labels of coffee beans being silly, dressed up in costumes, etc. So much of specialty coffee is so serious and almost funereal that I love Pair’s bright colors and sense of fun. Make no mistake, though, as cute as their branding is, the coffee inside is taken dead-seriously and they do it justice. Pair Cupworks are Kimhak and Eugenia. Kimhak is a barista and he handle the roasting of Pair coffees, which are roasted on-order in tiny batches.
This morning’s selection is Pair’s wet process (aka “washed”) coffee from Guatemala. This coffee was grown at 1459masl at Finca Severa, located near Santa Cruz Barillas in the department (think “state” in the US) of Huehuetenango. The varieties and cultivars in this lot are Anacafe 14, Caturra, Pache and Sarchimor. This coffee came from Royal, and they have an incredibly detailed info page here. This coffee was grown by Dr. Carlos Roberto Serrano Roa, who started Finca Severa in 1969 and named it after his mother. This is a washed coffee, which means after picking and sorting the cherries are run through a depulper to rupture the cherry skins and remove some of the gloopy mucilage inside. The sticky, coated “beans” are then fermented and washed to remove the rest of the fruit from them and dried in the sun over many days of careful turning and watching. Pair gives us tasting notes of raspberry, chocolate, “and a hint of cherry tomato” so that means we’re going to find some savory notes in this one, probably.
I’m using my usual pourover method 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 Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee bed. This coffee ran fast, coming in at 2:45 including a 30 second bloom.
The dry fragrance of the beans in the bag smelled like a bag of chocolate chips and I hope some of that makes it into the cup! Taking my first sip, I think this is unlike most of the Guatemalan coffees I’ve had in the past, and I’ve tasted a lot of them! This is a medium-light bodied coffee and I’m getting loads of chocolate right up front and into the finish and aftertaste. There is a milk chocolate sweetness to the cup with some bright notes to counterbalance it. I’m getting some apple-like sweetness and brightness here, which isn’t uncommon with Guatemalan coffees and comes from malic acid in the cup. I’m getting something almost citrusy, but not quite. A berry note may be in there, but I’m not confident enough to call it raspberry like Kimhak did on the label. I’m getting almost-orange. There is definitely tomato in here, though, and I’ve been eating a ton of cherry tomatoes over the past few months and it’s all over this coffee! Tomato, in coffee, you ask? Sure! It’s a fruit, it is bright and has quite a bit of acidity to it, and tomatoes tend to come with a savory note, too, and this coffee has all of the above. Put those together in a combination and your brain may do what mine is doing and say, “Oh, tomato!” It’s not like canned tomato juice or sauce, but like biting into a ripe, raw tomato and getting that savory, sweet, tangy juice. I’ve mostly experienced tomato in coffee from Kenyan coffees, but it’s definitely here in this Guatemalan. This coffee finishes sweet and has more tomato in the finish, but then transitions into lots of chocolate or cocoa for the aftertaste. As my cup cooled I started getting something quite earthy in the flavor, that I could accentuate if I held the coffee in my mouth and agitated it and puffed out air through my nose (retronasal tasting). It’s a bit mushroomy and a bit off-putting, but with normal sips it was minimal and as the cup continued to cool, it either went away or I attenuated to it. Overall, this is a really interesting coffee, especially coming from Guatemala where coffees tend to be bright and apple or citrus-forward or darker chocolate bombs for me. This had a little bit of both of those, but in an unexpected way, with sweet and semisweet chocolate tones throughout, apple and berry acidity and that tomato savoriness and tang to give a third dimension to the cup. I enjoyed drinking this coffee and I’m grateful that Kimhak continues to source great coffees and roast them in interesting ways, as well as for Pair’s incredibly cute artwork!