Good morning and welcome to today’s coffee review! I’m checking out a Mexican coffee from local Kansas City roasters, Monarch, so I hope you enjoy it!
Purchase this coffee directly for $16/12oz
MONDARCH SAN AGUSTIN LOXICHA MEXICO
Monarch was opened by Tyler and Jaime Rovenstine in Kansas City, Missouri in 2017. Tyler was earlier involved with another KC specialty coffee icon, Oddly Correct, and has well over 10 years of experience in the coffee business from barista to entrepreneur. He has Q-grader certification (think of that like the coffee version of a sommelier, but SO much more, using all the senses to detect quality and defects in coffee) and has competed in barista competitions at a high level, too. In the summer of 2017, Monarch opened a location on Broadway in Midtown Kansas City. In 5 minutes you can now hit Monarch, Oddly and Broadway Cafe, making this little section of town quite the powerhouse for coffee crawlers! They’ve recently redesigned their bag aesthetic and I absolutely love it! The bags are now boldly colored, with about 1/3 in one color and the other 2/3 in a complementary or contrasting color, and Monarch printed in gold ink. They are modern and classy at the same time and this adds just a little extra joy to the purchasing experience, for me. Monarch has somewhat recently added a second location at 2345 Grand near Hospital Hill, so it’s great to see their growth in the area.
Monarch is right across the street from a place I volunteer at every week and I had some extra time a couple weeks ago, so I popped across the street and I rarely drink Mexican coffees, so when I saw this San Agustin Loxicha I bought it right away. The butterscotch and bright green bag makes me happy every time I look at it, especially with its pink sticker! These are colors that shouldn’t work together, but on a coffee bag, I love it! This is a washed coffee of Typica Pluma variety beans collected from 8 smallholder farmers in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Coffee grows at 1500-1800masl which seems high for Mexico, so I wouldn’t be surprised if these are some of the highest altitudes for coffee growing in the country. According to Monarch, Oaxacan coffees were rarely recognized as the smallholders’ crops would be bought and mixed in with lower quality coffees from the large estates. Low coffee prices and leaf rust problems have apparently driven a lot of these big estates out of the business, and out of necessity, the smallholder farmers are still struggling to keep their farms going despite these adversities. They don’t have much of a choice. So, ironically, the quality and exceptional flavors of Oaxacan coffees and the Pluma variety are now being recognized by more and more importers and that’s a good thing.
Monarch specializes in light roasts for sure and this one came up as a 27 on the Espressovision Roast Vision. Roast Vision uses a scale of 0-34 with 34 being the absolute lightest. It is a visual scale, so it is just one parameter in judging the roast level of a coffee, but it’s super helpful. 27 is the lightest coffee I’ve run on mine since I’ve had it for the last month or so. Comparing my tasting notes to Monarch’s, they say this coffee is, “nectarine, rainier cherry, brown sugar, juicy” and it looks like I was in the ballpark with my thoughts on this coffee!
For my filter brews, I am using my standard 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin flat bottom brewer using a Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation. After a 30 second bloom, this coffee brewed in 3:24 (so, just under 4:00 total). Of course, I tried this coffee as espresso, too, and you can see my espresso notes at the end of the review.
The aroma from this coffee is subtle, but it’s giving me some light caramel, hints of cocoa and quite a lot of bread crust. Taking a sip, this is a medium-bodied coffee that has a lot of sweetness and some nuttiness in the base. I’m getting some honey-like notes here and a roasted nut flavor, although true to my palate I can’t really nail it down to a particular type of nut. There is a good amount of fruit here that comes in right after the initial hit of sweetness. I’m getting some peach-like notes and some green apple. The fruit here is sweet and bright and refreshing, and there is a hint of tartness associated with it, too, so I’m going to amend my “peach” note to more of an apricot, which to me is always a little brighter and a little more tart/acidic than peach. At times while sipping this coffee I’m getting brief flashes of something spicy, like black pepper. I’m not super well-versed in the wide variety of black peppers, or white or green peppercorns, but there is a note that reminds me of something in that family of plants. This coffee finishes sweet and leaves that apricot note coating my palate between sips. The first 5 seconds or so of the aftertaste is pretty subtle and mostly just sweet, then for about another 5 seconds that apricot/peach comes in and intensifies, which is cool. Usually aftertaste is sort of the opposite for me, declining in intensity away from the sip, so I rather enjoy experiencing that effect. I’m really enjoying this coffee. Mexican coffees are not often known for their complexity of flavor, but this one certainly has some nice flavors to parse out. It’s very drinkable and while I’m a morning coffee drinker, I think this would make a nice afternoon cup as it is light and refreshing and feels “cool” to me as opposed to the “warmer” flavors I often find in coffee like cocoa and chocolate and baking spices as examples. This coffee just tastes and feels fresh and invigorating, so it could be a nice mid-day pick me up although I’m digging it at 7AM just as much!
But Does it ‘Spro?
This coffee works pretty nicely as espresso. I find the very light roast to be a little tough to tame on my Quick Mill Carola Evo using either of my Orphan Espresso grinders (Lido E or Pharos), so it was prone to channeling for me, but it still worked nice in terms of flavors. This is probably a coffee that would do well with some fancy flow control and/or lower pressure, but even I’m not THAT fancy! LOL I just pulled a shot with 18.5g dose and a 38.0g yield in a relatively short 25 seconds. It’s bright, but not bracing or harsh. As espresso, I am picking up a lot of that peach/apricot note and the tartness is elevated some, and the tart cherry comes out a lot for me. Cherry is a very common flavor note for me and light roasted espresso, but if it’s there, it’s there! The sweetness here reminded me of dairy a bit and I got some lemon candy acidity with this shot, too. I am not a milky person at home, so all I can say is what the straight espresso tasted like and I’m not sure how this would turn out in a milk drink. Probably pretty good, as to me this wasn’t fruit forward enough to give that curdled milk note you can get from light roast milkies, but who knows?