Good morning and welcome to today’s review, where I’m tasting a Peruvian coffee from a new Kansas City-based roaster, Khomanta! It’s so exciting to discover new roasters, particularly when they are right here in my backyard, so thanks for being on this journey with me today and let’s taste some coffee!
Purchase this coffee directly from Khomanta for $18.25/12oz
I’m not 100% sure how long this code will work for, but if you buy 2+ bags from Khomanta, try using the discount code “FLATTENTHECURVE” and you’ll get free shipping! People local to KC will get refunded shipping and they’ll deliver it for free in-person. Something else cool, their “green label” coffee, El Manantial, is on sale, but the cut the producer gets is still what they would have gotten if the coffee was selling for full price. Khomanta sounds like good people!
KHOMANTA COFFEE PERU LA PIÑA
I’m excited this morning because I get to share my first taste of coffee from a new Kansas City roaster with you, Khomanta Coffee. I have never heard of Khomanta until about a month ago when they reached out to me. Khomanta was started by Haydee and Clint in late 2019. They have a lot of information about their story on their website, but long story short, Haydee was born in Peru and the couple previously lived there for a time. Haydee dove into coffee, cupping, learning about production, taking classes about coffee, etc. and she fell in love, and this led to business plans, as passions often do. Khomanta means “hug” or “embrace” in the ancient Peruvian language, Aymara. Haydee and Clint’s business approach is to source excellent, organic coffees directly from the farms and to share an ambitious amount of the profits directly back to the producers. Khomanta are currently working with two producers in Peru and they stay in regular contact with them through phone and Whatsapp. They seem to have a real, genuine connection with these folks that you can read more about here. Their Instagram has shared the realities of what Peru’s hard lockdown means for smallholder coffee farmers, too, and it makes the coffee in my cup this morning mean so much more. I could go on and on, but let’s get to the coffee!
This morning’s coffee is Khomanta’s La Piña. This is a special microlot of yellow Caturra from Jorge Zamora’s farm near San Ignacio, in the Cajamarca region of Peru. Coffee grows at 1900masl there and this is a washed coffee that Khomanta calls a medium roast. Visually, I see no oils on the coffee and these beans are hard and dense. The Zamoras grow organically and are also fair trade certified. The coffee is named La Piña after the pineapple trees growing on the farm, too, and Khomanta says, “Too bad they didn’t impart their flavors” but as you’ll see below, I was getting a pineapple vibe (not a flavor, but a feel) from this cup and it’s fruitiness and I had not read any of this stuff to sway my mind beforehand, so maybe it did come through in the coffee! LOL Khomanta says, “This coffee makes a wonderfully sweet, smooth and velvety cup, twinkling with hints of chamomile, honey, and strong notes of caramel.” Read way more about the Zamoras here! 30% of the profit from their coffee goes back to this family!
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. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to keep agitation of the coffee bed to a minimum during brewing. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and the total brew time was a slightly fast 3:00 total.
I’ve done a really good job shielding myself from any of the tasting notes, processing details, etc for this coffee, so even though all those details are above, I filled them in after I did my tasting, so I can’t wait to see if my palate passes the test! The aroma from this cup is really nice… a warm, brown sugar note with some cocoa or chocolate in there, too. I got a flash of a smell I haven’t smelled in almost 40 years, I’ll bet, and it reminded me of a cereal I remember my dad eating when I was REALLY little. Smells and memories, man! Anyway, taking a sip, this is a medium- bodied coffee that is sweet and bright right out of the gate. On the low end of this coffee, I’m getting some of that brown sugar again, as well as a subtle honey note in the sweetness. There’s cocoa peeking around the edges, too. To counter this sweetness, there is a fruitiness to this cup that I am really enjoying. This coffee is tasting like a Central American natural for me. I’m getting strawberry here… lots of strawberry… with the sweetness that comes with it and that slight fruity tartness from the fruit’s acid profile. There’s a bit of green apple here, but this is not as apple-tasting of a coffee as I am used to with Peruvian coffees. For me, Peruvian coffees usually have a lot of malic acid, which is found in apples, pears and other fruits, and malic-forward coffees have an apple juice sweetness and crisp acidity to them. In fact the last coffee I reviewed was Peruvian and was exactly this profile. There’s very little of that in this coffee. The fruitiness here, in addition to the strawberry, is more tropical for me, which is why I keep thinking of Central naturals. This fruit component reminds me of pineapple in that it is sweet and a little tart and bright at the same time (in good ways), just like pineapple, but I wouldn’t say I am getting actual pineapple flavor notes here. It’s more the feel. As the cup cools off I’m getting a little hint of coriander here and there. This coffee finishes sweet and leaves strawberry in the and lingering aftertaste for me, as well as that sensation of tropical fruits.
This is really good! This is a super-enjoyable coffee. It’s sweet and bright but super inviting and easy to drink. This coffee was a gulper for me, I went through my cups fast every time because I just wanted to keep tasting it and then I’d be at the end of my cup before I knew it! Going into the website for this coffee I’m not surprised to see it’s a washed coffee because I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything other than washed coffees from Peru, but it sure has all the qualities of a natural without any of the ferment in the flavors. This is the brightest and most fruity/tropical Peruvian coffee I’ve ever had and it’s so delicious! And, looking back on my descriptors compared to Khomanta’s, I didn’t do too badly! We both mentioned honey, I said brown sugar and panela is unrefined, brown cane sugar. I missed the chamomile but that bit of what I was reading as coriander is at least not on the other side of the planet. I’ll take it as a win! LOL