Good morning and welcome to today’s review of a beautiful Brazilian natural coffee from my pals at S&W Craft Roasting. You know this is going to be good, so let’s jump right into it!
Purchase this coffee for $16.15/lb (16ozs!)
S&W CRAFT ROASTING BRAZIL DATERRA SUMMER SOLSTICE
Nick and Charlie of S&W Craft Roasting have been at coffee roasting for quite some time. I started KC Coffee Geek in 2015 and they were established by then. They remain one of my favorite roasters, and I have tried A LOT of coffee from S&W over the years without finding a bad one in the bunch! What I love about S&W is that they’re located in the tiny town of Coatesville, Indiana (population around 500!) and yet they source and roast world class coffee, proof that you don’t need to be in a big urban area to find incredible coffee roasters. Their coffee is an insane value, too, with all of their coffees coming in around $15-16 per pound (16oz, not 12 oz). The money goes into their coffee, not fancy bags, labels or flashy websites. Their profits go back into their equipment and green sourcing so that they can continually up the ante on their offerings and the quality of their coffee coming back to you. I love everything about it, but I could go on and on, so let’s get to this morning’s coffee!
I’ll share more details about this coffee after my tasting notes… I always like to share my impressions first so I don’t bias my brain with someone else’s tasting notes as I do my research. I used my standard pourover method for this coffee, which is a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper. The Origin is a flat bottom, three hole brewer like a Kalita Wave, and it uses Kalita 155 size filters. I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize the agitation in the brew bed, and my grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3. This coffee got a 50 second bloom and the total brew time including the bloom ran 4:50.
The dry fragrance on these natural beans is nice, reminding me of the fruitiness of wine without any of the booze. In the cup, the aroma at the fresh-brewed temp has a bit of brown sugar and a maple hint I didn’t expect. The maple aroma burned off as the cup cooled and being hayfever season, my nose isn’t working to its full potential, but I’m still getting lightly caramelized sugar and a “red fruit” component that I can’t quite parse out, but reminds me of the color, red. Aromas that smell like colors? I guess! LOL There’s something dairy-like in the sweetness I’m getting from this coffee, too. Taking a sip, I’m getting a lot of sweetness and complexity here. Chocolate, dairy, nuts, fruit, maple still in the finish. For a Brazilian coffee, I’m impressed by the complexity of flavors here and this is probably the most complex Brazilian coffee I’ve ever had. There’s a candy-like sweetness to the beginning of the sip with some milk chocolate undertones here and a medium body that has some dairy sweetness and mouthfeel for me. There’s a density and a slickness to the mouthfeel that reminds me of cream. Those “red fruits” are here again and let’s see if I can explain them a little more… there’s a sweetness and a little bit of acidity here, maybe lemon candy but more as a balancing agent for all that sweetness than the star of the show. There may be a little strawberry here for me, but I don’t quite love that descriptor. It’s not the strawberry I’d find in an Ethiopian natural, it’s more of a mellow and, again, dairy-based strawberry note like strawberry yogurt. This coffee finishes sweet and there’s a hint of maple in the immediate aftertaste for me, which also has a bit of a floral note. I’m horrible with florals and this definitely isn’t jasmine, which I’m usually good at picking up. Maybe something rose-like here. There’s a bit of Hershey’s milk chocolate in the longer aftertaste for me, too.
Looking back at these notes, this review is a little all over the place, but these varied flavor notes work REALLY nice together in this cup. It’s definitely in the top 3 most complex coffees I’ve had from Brazil and it’s probably #1, really. That being said, this is a refreshing pourover and very accessible. The complexity is more subtle than it could be from other regions, so there’s no palate fatigue here, and you could just drink it and work or do something else and miss a lot of the details while still enjoying a killer cup of coffee. I love it!
More About the Coffee
This coffee is from Daterra farms in Cerrado, Brazil. It’s a natural process coffee consisting of Bourbon and Catuai varietals grown around 1150masl, which is pretty high for Brazil. This is a Rainforest Alliance certified coffee, one of the few in Brazil. Daterra has a nice website I linked to at the top of the review and they must be a big operation because they have a lot of offerings. It looks like they have multiple estates in the region. S&W say they usually pass on Brazilian naturals, but were really surprised at the cupping table with this one. Their description reads:
Light and vibrant – lemon, lavender, rose tea… so refreshing! City roast.
Let me preface by saying that historically, I have not been big on Brazil Naturals, and this coffee is a wild departure from what I’m used to – I’m so glad to have found it! This is a light but super refreshing pourover. But… shots, you ask? Yes, amazingly bright and sweet – this is an awesome eye opener – definitely not your grandad’s espresso! If you told me this was a high elevation washed Panama in a blind cupping, I’d believe you.
I definitely got the lemon and it’s nice to see rose tea here because I picked up on that subtle note of rose, too! Yippee! And, espresso, you say? I did use quite a bit of this coffee as ‘spro when I first got the shipment, and I remember lemon being a big feature of the shots, but in true KCCG form I couldn’t be bothered to take notes on those shots. The coffee is a little long in the tooth right now for espresso shots, but my Quick Mill Carola Evo is all warmed up, so let’s see what I can do… This is definitely not an espresso for beginners. This is a hard, lightly roasted bean and so I found it necessary to use a really fine grind, a long preinfusion at about 2 bars, and then pull the shot. So, long shot times with a really low initial pressure that ramps up. You need something with flow control for that and I know the S&W crew use a Decent espresso, which has flow and pressure control and can do a lot of wild things with espresso. My machine has manual flow/pressure control and I think this would be a tough ‘spro without it. It’s bright, lemon-forward, and delicious. Definitely works as a shot, probably not for milkies, though, as I imagine it would read as a little “spoiled milk” when mixed with dairy, but I could be wrong.
Nicholas Smith
Great review Steve, this is the first Brazil I’ve absolutely loved!