Good morning and welcome to today’s review! I’m checking out another coffee from Alaska’s SteamDot, so let’s power through Friday and get into the weekend with this coffee!
Other reviews in this series: Congo Rebuild Women’s Hope
STEAMDOT HONDURAS FINCA LOS LESQUINES LOT #44
SteamDot is a specialty coffee roaster and cafe that was founded in Anchorage, Alaska in 2009. The name is a play on the big red shed they first occupied in the historic rail yards across from the parking area for locomotives. SteamDot says, “We could feel the ground shake when they rumbled to life. We fell in love with the play on words between billowing steam from trains and espresso machines, and the dot on the map where our beginnings took root.” SteamDot has grown to three cafes in Anchorage, plus the roastery, and I’m happy to say they are the first red dot I’ve put on the KC Coffee Geek map for Alaska, too!
This morning’s coffee from SteamDot is their Finca Los Lesquines Lot #44 from Honduras. This is a Caturra lot that was honey processed, and it looks like they just sold out of it, but SteamDot has a lot of nice looking selections available, so make sure you check them out anyway. Finca Los Lesquines is in Corquín, Copan, Honduras and is run by Maria Villeda. The farm is just 15 hectares and sits at 1450masl. 10 of the hectares there is Caturra variety and Maria is the 4th generation of her family running this farm, which was established in 1865! This particular lot is a honey process coffee, meaning that the coffee is run through a depulper to break the cherry skins and remove some of the sticky mucilage (aka honey) inside, but not all of it. These sticky beans are laid out to dry slowly in the sun and they get some of the fruitiness, sweetness and body of a natural coffee but with less ferment. SteamDot gives us tasting notes of, “rhubarb, watermelon, white chocolate” for this one, and let’s see what I find.
I’m using my standard pourover setup (although I’ve been digging this coffee as espresso, too, where it has lots of dark chocolate notes with some lemon candy acidity) of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water. I use a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to prevent agitation of the coffee bed during brewing. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and this coffee brewed in 2:45 including a 30 second bloom.
Visually, this coffee is like the Congo I reviewed from SteamDot and it looks and grinds like a healthy medium roast level, but there is no sheen of oil or oil spots to be seen, so this was dropped out of the roaster well before second crack would have occurred. I’m getting dark caramel and some purple grape juice in the aroma. Taking a sip, the first thing that hits me is quite a bit of roast, but if I’m patient there is a lot of sweetness and fruitiness waiting to reveal itself behind that “curtain” of roasty notes once they dissipate. I’m getting a lot of what I think is purple grape juice in the sweetness as well as some grape-like acidity that I associate more with the thin skin of a grape. There is a cocoa-chocolate note on the bass side of this cup, too, and watermelon is definitely in play here. I’m getting both some watermelon flavor and sweetness as well as that slightly tart watermelon rind note that can make its way into coffee. There is a nice, round acidity to this cup that is grape-y and watermelon-ish, so there are some fruity acids in play here, but they’re pretty mellow compared to, say, citrus notes. As the cup cools that grape note is getting a little more plum-like and I really enjoy that dark purple plum note in coffee. My palate and olfactory senses are attenuating pretty quickly to the roast notes that were so in-my-face in the first few sips and that is mostly in the background, now, as well as in the aftertaste. I like a little roastiness in some coffees as it also can give just the right amount of “dryness” and bitterness to balance all the sweetness in the cup, too, and that’s what I’m getting here. In the ideal world, if it were this easy (and it ain’t), I’d ask SteamDot to reduce that roast note by about 50%, but even at full strength it’s not taking away from this coffee and, in fact, I think it adds something I like. This coffee finishes sweet and has a lingering fruitiness and some chocolate in there along with the roasty notes that last pretty much forever between sips.
I’m really enjoying this coffee. It has a nice juxtaposition of dark fruit notes and sweetness with bright flavors like watermelon that I wouldn’t immediately think can co-exist in a single origin coffee that hasn’t been blended. It’s sweet, even more grape juicey as it cools, but nicely balanced. I’m finding this to be a very easy coffee to drink and very appealing to all my senses. Delicious! I’m sad SteamDot is out of this one, but they have about 10 coffees on offer right now, so you’ll find something that appeals to you. I have two more to review in the coming days, so stay tuned for more from my new friends in Alaska!