Good morning and welcome to today’s review where I’m tasting Embrace Coffee Roasting’s current Colombian selection from Nariño. Slurp!
Purchase this coffee for $17.25/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Mexico La Yerba Women Producers
EMBRACE COFFEE ROASTERS COLOMBIA EDILMA LOPEZ
Embrace Coffee Roasters is a one-man operation based in Seattle, Washington. Embrace has been around for about a year and roasts out of space shared with Conduit Coffee in Seattle. Embrace’s founder/owner/roaster/packer/shipper/deliverer has a history in coffee going back to 2013 with Joe Coffee Company in Philadelphia and New York, Regard Coffee Roasters in British Columbia and most recently in Seattle. I reviewed Embrace’s La Yerba, a natural from Mexico, last week and it was fantastic, so I’m excited to jump into this morning’s coffee.
This morning I have Embrace’s current Colombian coffee, produced by Edilma Lopez. Edilma’s farm is called La Estoraque, located in Buesaco, Nariño at 2100masl. Edilma produces coffee with her sister and father and they have been finalists in the prestigious Cup of Excellence before. This coffee is imported by Shared Source, who I’ve never heard of before, but are working to bring more money to growers by working directly with smallholder farmers in a variety of regions. This lot of coffee is a mix of Caturra and Colombia varieties and like most of the coffee coming out of Colombia, it’s a washed coffee. Embrace gives us tasting notes of, “Full-bodied and rich with molasses-like sweetness, a smooth and crosp acidity balanced with candy bar finish. Please enjoy notes of black cherry, molasses, and hazelnut spread.”
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 my water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the brew bed during brewing. This coffee had a 30 second bloom and a total brew time of 3:30.
The aroma coming off my Origin brewer is amazing! I’m getting brown sugar for days, toasted marshmallow notes and a hint of cherry juice. It’s very inviting. Taking a sip, there is a lot of sweetness up front and I’m getting more brown sugar and caramel here. There’s a lot of fruitiness in the cup, too, but the fruits here are more of the sweet aspects of fruit and not so much about their acidity, which is what I usually am after when I’m describing fruits in coffee. Don’t get me wrong, this is a vibrant cup, but it’s not as bright as what I would usually call a fruit-forward coffee and that will appeal to people who think fruits in coffee read as “sourness.” I’m definitely getting black cherry. I drink a flavored soda water that is black cherry flavor and I am definitely picking up that vibe in this coffee. I’m getting a healthy amount of citrus, too, with definite orange notes. There’s a hint of savoriness to this cup, too, which conjures up images of everyone’s favorite coffee descriptor, tomato, in my mind! LOL It’s not tomatoey like a Kenyan coffee can be, but I am getting a little bit of that because of the savory component and the fruity acidity here. This is a nicely balanced cup and it has a quality that makes me really want to gulp it down. Usually that quality is “juiciness” but I wouldn’t call this a juicy coffee per se. I’m not sure what it is, but this coffee has me having to actively not take big, frequent sips and just chug it down! The finish of this cup is sweet and has a lot of brown sugar notes in the lingering aftertaste for me. There’s something a little spicy in the aftertaste, too, along the lines of cinnamon or ginger or a warming spice like that, but neither of those necessarily. The black cherry comes out again if you wait long enough between sips, too.
This is a really awesome coffee! It’s vibrant and has a lot of character, but it’s also sweet and balanced and structured. There is complexity to parse out for coffee geeks, and there are plenty of flavors to enjoy for people who just want a solid, pleasant cup of coffee, too. Colombia is one of my favorite origins and its coffees like this that make it that way! Another great roast from Embrace Coffee Roasters. If you’re going to order one of these coffees from Embrace, just bite the bullet and order them both (this one and the La Yerba natural Mexican) and chuck 1/2 of each bag in the freezer. These were fantastic coffees from Embrace and I hope to be able to taste more from them in the future!