Good morning and welcome to today’s review of H+S Coffee Roaster’s natural from Nicaragua. I’m excited about this one because I’ve been roasting a different Nicaraguan natural for the past few months and I can’t wait to see how much better H+S’s is than mine! LOL Let’s drink!
Purchase this coffee directly for $18.50/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Colombia Finca El Paraiso Huila Magico #3
H+S COFFEE ROASTERS NICARAGUA FINCA LO PROMETIDO NATURAL
It has been about five (5!) years since the last time I got to check out a series of coffees from H+S Coffee Roasters and so this is a very welcome re-visit. H+S Coffee Roasters was founded by Coulter Sunderman and Joshua Heien in the summer of 2014 in Laramie, Wyoming. Sunderman had gotten his start as a barista at another local Laramie roaster that leaned more traditional in its offerings. He worked his way into roasting and eventually becoming the roast master before heading out into the frontier on his own. H+S has remained strictly a roaster since then, with no cafe or open-to-the-public tasting room, although they do host cuppings and other events from time to time. They distribute coffee in shops and markets throughout Wyoming and even into Colorado in Fort Collins and the Boulder/Denver area, as well as happily shipping online anywhere you would like to order from. They have some really nice selections and their website is one of my favorite, with each coffee featuring tons of info about the farm and farmer, the coffee, flavors, brewing suggestions, etc. Top notch!
For this review, I’m going to change up my usual flow of my review so that it mirrors how I actually review coffees. I’ll give you my tasting notes FIRST this time, then we’ll get into the details of this coffee from H+S’s perspective after. When I review coffees I avoid the roaster’s website and do my best to avoid any label information, so I keep the bags out of sight and out of mind so I don’t bias my palate. After I’m done collecting my review notes, THEN I do my research and see how my palate compared to the roasters’. Since that’s how I actually review coffee, I’ll try out this format for a while and see what kind of feedback you readers want to give!
Just to give the most basic details, this coffee is a Nicaraguan-grown natural process coffee with a light roast, so we can expect a decent fruit presence, in my experience, probably a decent amount of ferment, and this should be a nice, sweet cup with good body to it. The photo below is courtesy of H+S Coffee Roaster’s website and was taken by Coffee Quest, who imported this coffee. Check out the steepness of Finca Lo Prometido, where this coffee was grown! This hopefully gives more appreciation to you about the toughness of growing coffee in Nicaragua!
My Brewing Method
This morning I went with a slightly bigger ratio than my usual 1:16, so I used a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper. The Origin is a three-holed (well, that’s how I set mine up, you can vary the holes, the spacing, the pattern, etc) brewer with a flat bottom like a Kalita Wave or numerous others. I use a Kalita 155 size filter in it. I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee bed and my grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and the total brew time, bloom included, came in at 3:39.
My Tasting Notes
The first aroma to hit my nose from the Trinity Origin vessel is this fantastic toffee, ever-so-slightly-singed sugar note. As the cup cools I’m getting more fruit and a cotton-candy like sugariness in the aroma which I find very inviting. The fruitiness here in the aroma is a bit of berry, a bit of ferment. Taking a sip at a warmer-than-my-average-drinking-temperature is giving me some nice flavors already. There’s strawberry here, and a very dairy-like sweetness and vibe. This reminds me at this temperature of something like Quick Strawberry milk or the milk left at the end of a strawberry flavored cereal, like Frankenberry or something along those lines. I’d say this coffee has a medium to medium- body for me at this temperature and we’ll see if that changes as it cools. I’m getting a hint of citrus acidity here, maybe a little lemon candy riding under the strawberry note, but it’s pretty subtle. There’s a bit of ferment to this cup, but not a lot. For the record, I actually enjoy fermentation notes in naturals and they don’t bother me a bit, so your mileage may definitely vary with this one. To me, especially with Central American naturals that are more subtle in their flavors than their African cousins, a bit of ferment adds some complexity and dimension to the cup that I like, and I guess I just generally like ferment (when done on purpose!) in foods and beverages. As the cup cools I’m getting a bit more brightness and a little tartness that reminds me of apricot. As my cup is approaching room temp that apricot-y note is on the way out, or maybe my palate is attenuating to it. As I expected, the body feels a bit heavier and there is more weight to this coffee on my palate. That dairy sensation is even more present now because of this. I know that actual sugars make up very, very, VERY little of the final product in a cup of coffee and they may be in such a low concentration that they are subthreshold and can’t even be perceived, but all that being said this coffee FEELS like a sugared drink, leaving me with thick saliva at the back of my throat like a just drank a soda or something. Strawberry and berry jam are still prevalent, tons of sugariness here, a hint of apricot jam is still hanging around, too. The finish is sweet and then the aftertaste is that jammy, sugary note with hints of watermelon Jolly Rancher coming in now! LOL I didn’t expect that! Of course, now that my mind centered on Jolly Rancher, I can taste it in the sip, too, but I think this is my brain playing tricks on me.
This is a really great coffee. There’s a good amount of complexity here and it’s all flavors that play very well with one another, so it’s still a very easy drinking and enjoyable coffee at the same time. I love this mix of flavors, especially the dairy-like sweetness and the fermenty, slightly overripe berry notes work SUPER well together for me. REALLY good!
The Details from H+S Coffee Roasters
This coffee is grown by Luis Alberto Balladarez at his farm, Finca Lo Prometido, in the Dipilto-Jalapa mountain range in the Nuevo Segovia department (like a state in the United States, I think). Elevation at the farm ranges from a “low” end of 1450masl to the top end at 1650masl! Luis owns 13 hectares, with 9 currently in coffee production and 3 about to come online. Luis grows a lot of varieties including Red Catuai, SL-28 (the famed grapefruit bomb so closely associated with Kenya), Bourbon, Java, Maracaturra and the giant Pacamara. Naturals, like this coffee, get dried on raised beds for 30-35 days, which is a long drying time, and Luis has placed or won the Cup of Excellence auction more than once in his career, so he is well-acquainted with the growing and processing practices that yield good prices from the specialty market. This particular coffee from H+S is Java variety and they say you can use any method to brew it and it should do well. Their tasting notes, which I am very happy to see, are, “Sweet ripe strawberry, apricot, plenty of other fruits; very sweet, complex, milky, creamy body, reminiscent of cereal milk. Very unique.”
Alright! I don’t REALLY care that much if my notes vary from the roasters’ notes because this is such a subjective thing, but it is cool to get some validation from time to time when they are almost dead-on! Woot!