Good morning and welcome to today’s review of a newer local Kansas City roaster, Sway Coffee Roasters, and their direct trade Guatemalan. This roaster is poised to make a big name for itself locally and nationally, so thanks for coming along with me to find out why!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17/12oz (and free shipping with orders over $25)
Social media links: Sway Coffee Roasters | McClain’s Bakery | Kris Carlson (brand manager/kickass coffee human)
SWAY COFFEE ROASTERS GUATEMALA DIRECT TRADE
Sway Coffee Roasters are a fairly new addition to Kansas City’s thriving specialty coffee market, having opened at the end of 2019. I just got a chance in early March to do some coffee tasting with Kris Carlson, who is the brand manager (among other hats she wears) and got my first taste of their coffee and what they’re hoping to bring to the specialty coffee scene. Sway is a sister company to McClain’s, a well-loved local bakery. Around September of 2020 Sway moved its roasting into a space shared with the beautifully built-out new McClain’s in downtown Shawnee, Kansas (for those not from around here, Shawnee is one of the many suburbs/smaller towns that are part of the Kansas City sprawl). I hate to admit, but after living here in KC for 14 years, this was my first time stepping into McClain’s, so better late than never! McClain’s opened in Kansas City, Missouri in 1945 and was run by the McClain family for three generations. It changed hands in 2001 and again to the current owners in 2014. The flagship location in Shawnee has their awesome baked goods and is headquarters for Sway Coffee Roasters, in addition to having lunch items and an alcoholic beverage menu, patio and even a drive thru. Sway Coffee Roasters is under the watchful eye of Kris, who has an extensive resume with many of the top roasters and cafes here in Kansas City, lots of barista experience, and with an infectious personality, seems to know everyone there is to know in the coffee scene! I think I caught in our conversation that Kris is a Q-grader, meaning she has the palate and knowledge to go along with all of that experience, and Sway Coffee Roasters is poised for big things because of it!
In addition to providing coffee for the McClain’s locations, Sway is set up to be an independent brand and is looking for wholesale partners and cafes who want to share their coffee with their patrons. Sway has a nice website and can ship coffee anywhere, and they have a LOT of options right now, so you will find something for every taste on Sway’s site, for sure. Currently they are shipping for free with any order over $25, so don’t miss out on that promotion.
This morning’s coffee is what Sway refer to as, “The pride and joy of our roasting program” and it’s a direct trade Guatemalan coffee that is Sway’s flagship coffee. I’ll tell you more about the coffee and growers after my tasting notes below, as I always like to do my tasting notes first, knowing the least about the coffee that I can, so my palate isn’t… um… swayed… in any particular direction by my brain! LOL I brewed this coffee using my standard setup of a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin flat bottom dripper with three holes (like a Wave, et al). I use a Kalita 155 filter and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to keep the coffee bed free of agitation. My griner is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3 and this coffee ran fast, coming in at a total 2:30 brew time including a 30 second bloom. I’ll play around with some tighter grinds and if it makes a difference to my flavor notes I’ll be sure to update things here and on Instagram.
Visually, this coffee looks like a “medium” roast with no oils or sheen of oils visible on the beans. Brace yourself for ultimate nerdiness… running samples of it on my Espresso Vision Roast Vision device shows it’s a 23 on a scale from 0-35. The larger the number, the lighter the roast. This is considered “medium-light” for that instrument and a 23 converts to about an 88 on the more standard Agtron scale.
My Tasting Notes
This is allergy season for me, so my nose is a little off, but I’m getting some nice caramelized sugars in the aroma here. Once I poured all the coffee from the Origin into my cup, the residue left is putting off the best brown sugar aromas I’ve gotten in a long time. This is one of those coffees that when I come back into my office after having been out of it for a couple hours the aromas in the room will just be to die for. Taking a sip, this is a medium bodied coffee for me and that caramelized sugar/hint of brown sugar is definitely coming through in the flavor. Maybe I just have “bakery” on my mind because of Sway’s affiliation with McClain’s, but this coffee is liked pies and cookies in a cup for me! There are nice hits of warming spices in the cup like you’d expect to find in holiday pastries and I’m getting some butteriness that reminds me of a sweet pie crust. On the fruit side, I’m getting some malic acidity (which is most associated with apples and pears) that lends a hint of red apple juice to the mix and there is a citrus note here, too. The citrus is interesting as for my palate it’s coming through with a savory note, so I’m getting a little umami from this coffee, too. The citrus itself is hard to pin down, but the first thing that came to my brain was blood orange. It’s definitely not lemon, lime or grapefruit and the citrus here is subtle, to me. Blood orange reads more robust and complex than your standard supermarket orange, to my mind, and I feel like it can have a bit of savory with it, too. It’s very nicely balanced and the fruit here is a nice complement to all that sweetness. This coffee has a bit of a dry feel on my palate and is a little dry in the finish and aftertaste, but not to the point that it bothers me in the least. I wonder if my short brew time could be the culprit for that, too, so take it with a grain of salt. That orangey note and some of that buttery crust linger in the aftertaste for as long as I can stand it before taking another sip! It’s easy to see why this coffee is a hit for Sway and McClain’s. It’s accessible, easy drinking, the flavors are familiar and inviting and overall this is a delightful, delicious coffee that I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying.
I think drip/filter is how this coffee shines, but I did do some espresso esperimentation (sorry, couldn’t resist) with it. I think these are dense as heck because even with an insanely fine grind setting and using pre-infusion and etc, this coffee runs fast on the espresso machine, too (for reference, the same grind and dose almost chokes Sway’s espresso blend, which I will be reviewing soon, too). A 1:2 ratio (20g of coffee, about 40g output in the cup) yields a light-bodied espresso that emphasizes the brightness of the coffee. Plenty of green apple here, orange, and a grapefruit pithiness on the finish. The finish is still a tad dry but like with the filter brew, not something that I mind. Not a bad espresso and I don’t have enough in my sample bag to really dial it in with an even shockingly finer grind, but I think filter is the way to go with this one.
About the Coffee
This coffee comes from Misión San Lucas Tolimán, which is a co-op of about 150 farmers growing on the slopes of the two local volcanoes near the town of San Lucas Tolimán on the shore of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. These farmers grow coffee at altitudes of 1600-1850 meters above sea level and this is a washed process coffee, meaning it is picked and sorted, then the cherries are run through a depulper to break the skins and remove a lot of the goop (mucilage) inside. The seeds inside the cherries are what we call coffee “beans.” After removing the skins and most of the fruits the seeds are fermented in tanks to remove the rest of the mucilage, then they are laid out on patios and circulated regularly to dry in the sun. Sway Coffee Roasters gives us flavor notes of, “smooth and balanced, graham cracker, toffee, citrus” for this coffee, so I feel pretty good about my palate agreeing generally with what Kris and the gang get from this coffee. Victory!