Good morning and welcome to today’s review! I’m taking a taste of Snowy Elk Coffee Co.’s Morning Bugle, a light roast, and I’m excited for it! It’s a cold morning here in Kansas City, where Spring started, and then retreated right back into its hole, so a good, warm cup of coffee is exactly what I need right now!
Purchase this coffee for $11/12oz (and gree shipping on orders of $45+)
Other reviews in this series: The Angler (dark roast, Colombia)
SNOWY ELK COFFEE CO. MORNING BUGLE
Snowy Elk Coffee Co. was started in Cheyenne, Wyoming by Scott and Julie Gondzar in Jan. 2018. Scott’s background was in brewing beer, but he developed a gluten intolerance and switched his palate and the attention to detail required from brewing beer to coffee. Good news for the community of Cheyenne! It looks like Snowy Elk took off fast, with a cafe and good distribution of their beans locally and across the country. In 2019, Snowy Elk took two bronze medals in the Golden Bean Awards for milk based espresso for their Morning Bugle and Base Camp blends, and a bronze for their decaf, Corpse Pose. The Snowy Elk gang are affiliated with the Roasters Guild, Specialty Coffee Associations, Barista Guild of America and the Coffee Technicians Guild. This is a gang that has really jumped with both feet into specialty coffee and that’s great to see!
This morning I’m checking out Snowy Elk’s Morning Bugle, which they won a bronze medal for in the 2019 Golden Bean Awards. This is “a mellow roast with a smooth caramel sweetness.” Morning Bugle is a washed coffee from the Cajamarca region of Peru, near San Ignacio. Morning Bugle comes from a cooperative of 330 smallholder farmers that was founded in 1969. Coffee grows in the 1000-1800masl range there. Snowy Elk has a ton of additional information about this co-op in this PDF, and I love when roasters share information like this!
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 with a Kalita 155 filter. Grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to keep the agitation under control during brewing. This coffee got a 30 second bloom, and a total brew time of 3:45.
The aroma coming from this cup is has some honey tones for me, as well as something that reminds me of crusty bread, like a nice Italian bread that’s right out of the oven. Taking a sip, this is a medium-bodied coffee with a lot of sweetness right up front. There’s a bit of a creamy vibe to the coffee, both in a slick mouthfeel but also a feel and undertone in the flavor of drinking cream. I’m getting caramel sweetness by the truckload here, along with a hint of spice that’s not quite black pepper, not quite ginger or cinnamon or another warming spice like that, but in that range. Peruvian coffees often have a malic acidity to them (malic acid is found in apples, pears and other fruits) and this one is no different. This creates a a red apple sweetness and that crisp, refreshing acidity that comes with apples. It’s a nice complement to the caramel sugars in the cup… I mean, apples and caramel, forget about it! As the cup cools I’m getting hit with a lot of jasmine all of a sudden, and this coffee seems to have taken a fast turn into jasmine green tea territory. Crazy! It still has all that sweetness, though, so it has shifted into this jasmine tea with loads of sugar sort of vibe for me. This is a really sweet coffee, but it still has enough balance that it isn’t cloying or overly sweet. It tastes like a coffee that has cream added, to me, so I’m still getting all that creaminess I was picking up in the first few sips. The finish on this coffee is sweet and it leaves a pleasant aftertaste that has hints of jasmine and a lot of that caramel. It’s a mellow, light aftertaste and a good finish to this cup.
This is a great coffee and no surprise it’s taking medals in competitions! Peruvian coffees are funny for me because Peru is one of those regions I never, ever reach for if there’s a wall of coffee to choose from in front of me, but I always like the coffees roasters send me from Peru! They tend to be a little lower in complexity, but this is a great example of what I love about Peruvian coffee… sweet, balanced, super easy to drink, crisp and refreshing acidity. This Morning Bugle is a sugar bomb and I love it!