Whirlwind Coffee Co. High Kick

Good morning and welcome to today’s review of a new-ish Chicago-based roaster, Whirlwind Coffee Co. and one of their blends. It’s Friday (yay!!!!) so let’s get the weekend started with the heartwarming story of this roasting company and the family behind it.

Whirlwind Coffee Co. website

Purchase this coffee directly from Whirlwind for $15.75/12oz.

WGN story on Whirlwind Coffee


WHIRLWIND COFFEE CO. HIGH KICK

Whirlwind Coffee Co. is a new coffee roaster and cafe that opened in Chicago’s Oak Park neighborhood early in 2021. It’s co-owned by David Silverstein and a 9-year-old girl named Maya. I wonder what having a 9-year-old business partner is like? Probably pretty interesting when she also happens to be your daughter! Whirlwind and the company’s ethos were inspired by David’s wife, Elana, who passed away 9 years ago, and the overall mission of the company is to bring people together no matter where they are in life. Incredibly, David and Maya donate 100% of their net profits to charities, and have a three-pronged mission to roast damn good coffee, sell it to humans at a fair price, and support their community by giving their profits back to other do-gooders. I don’t know how David is able to do this but it’s this kind of story that always brings me back to wanting to learn about the people and their stories behind these coffees I drink and share with you dear readers! Right now Whirlwind has Beyond Hunger, American Red Cross, Chicago Children’s Theatre and the Animal Care League listed as benefactors of their generosity, and David and Maya also let local organizations use their cafe space for things like family yoga and other community-building efforts. I think this is so timely and needed right now when we live in a world that is simultaneously so united and accessible by the Internet and cheap communication and yet people are often so isolated from real, meaningful contact with others by the very same thing.

High Kick is a blend of coffees from Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia and Ethiopia. With this many components, I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to the types of processing and etc, although it’s safe to assume the Guatemalan and Colombian components are washed coffees. I’m not getting anything even remotely berry-like from this coffee, so even though I said I wouldn’t guess I guess I am guessing now, LOL, so I would have to lean toward the Ethiopian coffee being a washed coffee here, too. The Brazilian component could go either way and it would be hard for me to tell. Natural Brazilian coffees are not berry bombs like East African coffees usually are, so they tend to make a nice, pretty neutral base for a blend whether they’re washed coffees, naturals, or something in-between like a pulped natural. Whirlwind call this a “medium” roast and give flavor notes of “dark chocolate, almond and citrus with hints of floral.” High Kick’s bag features whimsical art by Elana Ernst, who I assume is David’s late wife and that’s a nice addition to round out this whole story.

For my pourovers I am using my standard method of a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3 and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation in the brew bed. It just struck me that I hit the timer on this coffee and never bothered to look at the time this morning. My “feeling” is that the total brew time landed between 3:30 and 4:00. Ooops!

Taking a sip of High Kick, this is a medium-bodied coffee with a nice sweetness up front and right off the bat I can tell this is a blend that does the job of a blend just the way it’s supposed to. When I think of blends I think of balance, accessibility, familiarity and ease of drinking and High Kick checks all these boxes for me as a pourover. There’s a light caramel sweetness on the low end of this coffee and I’m also getting some milk chocolate notes from this cup. There’s a winning combination right there. All sweet and no acidity or high notes can be cloying and somewhat boring, though. In the mid-sip, this blend has some nice, laid-back citrus notes to add dimension, ceiling, balance and interest to all that sweetness. I’m getting some orange notes here, more like orange zest and peel than orange juice, which I really enjoy, and there’s a bit of lime coming through here, too. For me, I always associate lime in coffee with a rather sharp acidity accompanied by some bitterness. I know neither of these sounds real appealing but, trust me, in coffee and in the right proportions like in High Kick, these are good things. It’s like squeezing a bit of lemon or lime onto an otherwise boring dish and that hit of acidity just makes the whole thing pop, acidity does the same thing in coffee. In some sips I’m getting a hint of black pepper. This coffee has a sweet finish with a nice amount of lemon-lime coming through that sits on the palate through the aftertaste, a bit of chocolate and a pleasant nuttiness to the lingering aftertaste, too. A blend like this could easily be a house blend for a coffee shop, something that is familiar enough that 99% of coffee drinkers would enjoy that is also interesting enough to please the more geeky palates. I know if I walked past Whirlwind in Chicago and picked up a cup of this coffee to go I would be very happy with my choice!

Does It ‘Spro?
Ah, the age-old question, once again! LOL Yes, High Kick will ‘spro! I pulled quite a few shots from my bag settling into a 1:2 ratio for my recipe (19g in, around 38-40g out for most shots). My current setup is a Quick Mill Carola Evo with manual flow/pressure profiling, so I really am not timing shots right now, I’m going more based on weight in the cup and that seems to be working OK for the most part. I use an IMS 16/20g precision basket right now and a Flair 58 metal mesh thingamajig that sits on top of the prepared coffee puck. This thing helps disperse the water more evenly through the puck, prevent channeling, etc. My grinder is an Orphan Espresso Pharos 2.0. Back to the coffee, though… as espresso, this coffee is sweet but also has a fair amount of citrus kick, again leaning toward the peels and pith side of things. In the espresso cup I am getting a fair amount of lemon peel and also grapefruit pith, which both come with some nice bitterness that I like in espresso. I think this would play well with milk but I’m mostly non-dairy and the Evo doesn’t even have steaming capabilities, it’s a pure espresso monster!

Like I said, this High Kick blend is versatile and delicious and I couldn’t make a bad cup of it no matter what I did, so a great entry into Whirlwind’s coffees and I have a couple more bags of David and Maya’s coffees to share with you, too, so stay tuned!