Good morning, and welcome to today’s review where I’m checking out some coffee sent to me by my long-time Internet pal, Angry Barista! He’s mad at bad coffee, so let’s see what he’s doing about it!
Purchase this coffee directly for $15/12oz
Angry Barista social media: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Intentional Espresso coffee catering website
ANGRY BARISTA DAY OFF
Angry Barista is Randy Matheny, who describes himself as, “Fighting for a better coffee experience. Our CBO (Chief Barista Officer) isn’t angry; Rather, by making great coffee for your office or event he’s preventing those from whom you care about from becoming angry.” Randy is the owner/founder of Angry Barista and Intentional Espresso, a mobile espresso/coffee cart, located in Portland, Oregon. Randy also offers business consulting services to the coffee industry and is an executive board member of the Oregon Coffee Board. Randy and Intentional Espresso got somewhat famous for the wrong reasons at the end of November 2018 when his trailer containing everything he uses for Intentional Espresso got stolen. It was recovered about a month later and Randy’s ties to the Portland coffee community (which is pretty great, in my own experiences) got him through that rough patch and catering the events he was obligated to work.
One of Randy’s projects is roasting coffee under the Angry Barista moniker. I’ve been following all of his socials for a long time and when he reached out to me to send a couple coffees, I was immediately excited. I like AB’s simple labeling and enjoyed the bit of surprise color in the bags. Usually kraft bags like this are all brown, but this one has a nice rust red (to my colorblind eyes) pop of color on the side panels.
This morning’s coffee is Angry Barista’s Day Off blend, featuring, “coffees from East Africa and South America, roasted slightly darker, but short of a true dark roast so that the natural sweetness and texture of the blend is preserved.” Randy describes this coffee as “smooth, buttery, lingering dry fruit” as both pourover and espresso. The description says it is composed of washed coffees that will change with the current crop. I’m assuming that this blend is currently Ethiopia Sidamo Dangura, a washed coffee grown near Aleta Wondo at 1800-1950masl and Las Rosas from Huila, Colombia, a washed coffee grown at 1700-2000masl, since Angry Barista is currently offering these two as single origin bags.
For my filter preparation, I’m using my standard 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee and 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper. The origin is a flat bottom 3-hole design, so you should be able to get the same experience from a Wave or NotNeutral Gino or similar. This uses a Kalita 155 filter and my grinder is a Knock Aergrind. I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the brew bed. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and a total brew time of 3:15.
Taking a sip, I’m greeted by a medium to medium+ bodied coffee with a slick mouthfeel on my palate like an oatmeal stout. I’m getting a lot of sweetness and lots of fruitiness out of this cup. Up front there is a light honey sweetness that is quickly followed by a wave of fruity notes. Fruit flavors in coffee mostly come from acids in the coffee, so they add needed high-end to a coffee to balance the sweetness and darker flavors. I’m getting some hints of orange here, maybe some red apple, and some hints of mixed berry jam. There’s a little red grape going on in the second half of the sip, too, and in the lingering aftertaste I’m getting a hint of raisin and plum. My description makes this coffee sound like a fruit bomb, but all these flavors are somewhat subtle and lean toward the sweet component of all these fruits, rather than the brighter, higher acid component. They are in nice balance with the honey and light caramel notes of the low end of this coffee.
I also enjoyed Day Off as espresso. A common shot I was pulling with this coffee was 18.4g in, 34.4g out in 30 seconds. This created a medium+ to heavy- mouthfeel with a nice orange note that changed to more of a lime character, for me, because of the healthy amount of bitterness also in this style of shot. Lots of dark caramelized sugars and tart cherry here, too. The bitterness reminded me of robusta. I got some channeling on one of my shots and it used 18.8g for the dose, 50.7g out on 30 seconds. Medium to medium- body, but the orange was more apparent, the bitterness was knocked down and instead of the orange changing to lime it was more of a sweet lemon in the finish. Not bad for a shot gone wrong! Espresso nerd stuff after the conclusion below…
Angry Barista’s Day Off is a nice, all-around coffee, perfectly capable in the espresso machine as well as through a filter. There’s enough complexity for coffee geeks and it’s also just an easily enjoyed cup that doesn’t require you to think too hard about it if that’s what you want to do with your day off!
Espresso Nerd Notes
My machine is a Quick Mill Carola Evo, which I think I have set to 92 or 93C on the PID, although it has been 6 months since I set it, so I don’t recall for sure. Aftermarket IMS showed screen and bottomless portafilter running an IMS 16/20 basket. I used an Orphan Espresso Lido E for the grinding duties with this coffee. My prep method is to weigh, grind, re-weigh, dose the PF, stir with a BPlus WDT stirrer, distribute the grounds a little, groom with an OCD style tool and tamp with a 58.5mm diameter Decent Espresso tamper calibrated to 25lbs of tamping force.