Good morning and welcome to today’s review of Oddly Correct’s Leviathan Espresso! Slurp…
Purchase this coffee directly for $15/12oz.
ODDLY CORRECT LEVIATHAN ESPRESSO
Warning, I’m an Oddly Correct fan and in 6-ish years of drinking their coffee, I’ve never had a bad bean from them, so this is about as biased of a review as you’ll ever get from me! LOL Oddly Correct is a local Kansas City-based roaster and cafe that ranks in the top of pretty much everyone’s “best coffee in KC” list. Oddly Correct started out around 2008 as a garage-based roastery, started by Gregory Kolsto. Gregory had an extensive history with some large coffee operations before ending up in KC and embracing the DIY lifestyle, which included hand drawn bags and, eventually, their signature letterpress aesthetic that continues to evolve. I was introduced to Oddly’s coffee by Greg at an outdoor craft market in Midtown one summer, and a couple years later they opened a tasting room/cafe on Main Street in 2012. Oddly Correct generated some infamy in Kansas City as being “that place that doesn’t have flavorings, cream, or sugar” (other than being able to get traditional espresso milkies like a latte, cappuccino, etc) but to the KC coffee community it has always been SO much more than that. In the past couple years they’ve embraced more transparency in their business (not that it was cloudy to begin with) with regard to their employment and offer their workers paid time off, insurance benefits and other unheard-of bennies in the coffee industry. In the past few years, the OC gang have softened their stance a little by offering milkies with their homemade flavors. I think their flavors change with the seasons. Right now, they have bourbon vanilla, spiced fig, brown sugar rosemary and dark chocolate mocha. In the past when I’ve had their berry mocha and a turmeric based latte that were both phenomenal, but my go-to at Oddly Correct is always espresso, just the way God made it, black, unadulterated, and perfect.
For a long time, Oddly Correct offered a new seasonal espresso 4 times per year, and I THINK they are still doing that, but they’ve also added Leviathan Espresso as their mainstay, saying, “6 years of blending a new espresso every 3 months taught us a lot. We learned how to quickly find and evaluate fresh coffees that can play well with milk while remaining vibrant and sweet. We also learned that certain coffees work better than others, and that we really enjoyed particular combinations of coffees that just happened to come from places in the world where fresh coffees are available nearly year-round.”
I purchased my bag of Leviathan in the first week of 2021 for $15 and this iteration features Greg’s artwork and letterpress printing on a resealable bag of a giant kitty about to wreak havoc on a Jaws-inspired ship captain. Surrealism and a sense of humor are current themes in OC’s artwork and I always dig it. As is my custom, I avoided looking at the label completely until I sat down to write my review, so I wouldn’t bias my tastebuds, so I completely missed their recommended recipe for this coffee. LOL Oh well, tastebuds always dictate the direction to go in, anyway, but it’s a nice touch to have a starting point. Leviathan is currently a blend of coffees from Cauca, Colombia (assuming that’s washed), Mogiana, Brazil and Guji, Ethiopia. I feel like most of the Guji’s I see are washed coffees, but I’m going out on a limb with this one being a natural because I was getting a lot of berry notes from this coffee and that’s TYPICAL of Ethiopian naturals. Brazilian coffees are commonly found as naturals, washed coffees or as pulped naturals (sort of an in-between process), but Brazilian naturals tend not to be anywhere near as berry-forward as Ethiopians. I’ll see if I can find out from Oddly. Oddly Correct gives tasting notes of, “Cherry, dark chocolate, apricot” (which I was happy to see because my tastebuds agreed!) and says this is a “creamy, complex, sweet” coffee. I measured this coffee on the Espresso Vision Roast Vision instrument, which uses a scale of 0-35, with higher numbers being lighter roasts (visually… more goes into “roast level” than just the visual aspect). Leviathan measured 20-22, which puts it in the “medium-light” range according to Espresso Vision’s classification system. This is consistent with Oddly Correct, whose roast style runs on the light side, enhancing bright flavors, fruitiness, acidity (a good thing in coffee) and minimal roastiness/carbon notes.
Oddly Correct offers a recipe of using a 19.5g dose with 37g of output in 25 seconds, so a 1:1.9 ratio. In espresso lingo, this is often referred to as a normale shot, which is classically a 1:2 ratio, meaning you pull twice the weight of coffee into the cup than the dose you started with in the portafilter. Another common style of espresso is a ristretto, which is classically a 1:1 shot, so if you started with 19g in the portafilter you’d be aiming for 19g in the cup at the end of your shot.
Since I avoided looking at the label to keep my tastebuds unbiased, I pulled a wide variety of shots as I dialed in Leviathan to my taste preferences. It’s pretty forgiving in that regard, as I didn’t have anything unlikeable out of this whole bag, but running in the 1:2 range or even a little beyond, to my surprise, definitely yielded an easier drinking espresso. My ristretto-style shots were super intense, so more volume calms things down and balances the cup. For example, a few days ago I pulled a shot using 19.1g in the portafilter and ended up with 49.2g in the cup after 27 seconds, which is a wild 1:2.6 ratio. Normally, this would be a pretty weird shot, but it worked great for this coffee and may have been my favorite pull of the whole bag! This shot gave me loads of berry jam, a very peachy aftertaste and apricot in the sip. In the normale range, shots were heavy-bodied with a syrupy mouthfeel, sweet, had a nice-looking crema and lots of berry jam and apricot as the main flavor notes, for me. My final shot, this morning, was 19.1g in, 37.4g out in 27 seconds and it had a lot of raspberry, raw sugar sweetness, a juicy mouthfeel and a hoppy bitterness. I don’t have milk steaming capabilities at home, but all of these flavors work well with milk in small or larger drinks, so I have no reason to believe Leviathan wouldn’t play nicely with milkies from macchiatos and cortadoes to giant lattes. I have to agree with Oddly Correct that their experience has yielded a delicious, versatile, easy-drinking year-round espresso that is fruity, sweet and complex, yet palatable and drinkable at the same time. YUM!
For the equipment and process geeks
My equipment for this coffee included an Orphan Espresso Pharos V2 grinder and a Quick Mill Carola Evo E-61 based espresso machine. I used an aftermarket naked portafilter with Decent Espresso 20g precision basket and their V1 25-lb tamper that is precision-matched to their basket circumference (which I think is 58.5mm). I use Third Wave Water’s espresso-machine formula for my water. For my process, I spritz the beans with water to keep the static minimal, grind, then dose the portafilter. I do a WDT stir with a BPlus tool (4 thin wires to break up clumps), distribute with a few taps, clean up the surface with an OCD-style tool, then tamp and pull.