Good morning and welcome to today’s review of new-to-me roaster, Notion Coffee located right here in Kansas City, and their Anatomy Espresso. I’ve been away from the keyboard for WAY too long, so let’s just dive right in!
Purchase coffee directly for $16/10oz
NOTION COFFEE ANATOMY ESPRESSO
Notion Coffee is a newer roaster located in the Kansas City metro area south of the city in Grandview, Missouri. It looks like Notion as a brand got their start in the Fall-Winter of 2018 although its roots go back a little further as it rose from the ashes of Cafe Main, which started in Grandview around 2011. The brothers who own Notion worked for Cafe Main and bought the business when they decided to close. They moved the cafe operation onto the campus of IHOP-U (International House of Prayer University) in Grandview and operated the cafe as Cafe Main for a while, and then rebranded it as “prefix.” in the summer of 2021. The cafe has a large space with lots of seating, some bakery options, etc. although I did find it’s location within IHOP-U to be a little intimidating. I didn’t burst into flames while there, so all was good! LOL
Notion Coffee is the roasting arm of the operation, and I think this is a smart move to separate the coffee brand from the cafe brand, as this allows Notion the ability to get some good wholesale partnerships with other local restaurants and cafes in the area. Their hustle seems to be working, as co-owner Jonathan told me they are roasting 300lbs of coffee per week on a small Diedrich IR-2.5 (I think) roaster that handles about 5 lbs at a time! Notion is currently tucked into the back of prefix. with a footprint of about 200-300 square feet, by my estimation. This small space handles green coffee storage, roasting operations, packaging and shipping, as well as the dishwashing for the cafe! Jonathan said they were moving to a much, much larger space soon (like, as in thousands of square feet), so I expect to see a lot more out of Notion Coffee in the coming year or two.
Notion Coffee is sold in 10oz packages with a simple brown valve bag tucked into a cool black and white box. Notion seem to have a good head on their shoulders regarding marketing and branding. At $16/10oz, their Anatomy Espresso blend is slightly pricier than a lot of specialty roasters’ house espresso, but it’s in the ballpark. This current iteration of Anatomy that I’m reviewing is a blend of Brazilian, Guatemalan and natural Ethiopian coffees. This is a light roast, coming in at a 27 on my Espressovision Roast Vision instrument. The Roast Vision uses a 0-35 scale, with higher numbers being lighter roasts. A 27 converts to a 99 on the Agtron scale in case you’re familiar with that range. It’s visually a light roast and using my Pharos hand-grinder for this, I can certainly verify as this coffee came in somewhere between “torn rotator cuff” and “inguinal hernia” on the Pharos Grind Difficulty Scale! LOL Generally, a light roast like this means we’re in for a modern flavor profile that will likely be bright and fruit forward.
To give a little more detail about the coffee, the components are from Conceicao Das Pedras, Brazil, Huila, Colombia and Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia with growing altitiudes ranging from 1100-2100masl and the Brazilian and Ethiopian coffees are naturals while the Colombian is washed.
For equipment, I’m using the aforementioned Orphan Espresso Pharos 2.0 grinder and a Quick Mill Carola Evo with manual flow/pressure control. I use a bottomless portafilter and watch every shot. Basket is either an IMS 16/20 competition basket or a Decent Espresso 20g precision basket (I think I have the IMS in right now) and I replaced the stock shower screen with an IMS one. I’m tamping with a Saint Anthony Industries Model T with a 58.6mm base. Finally, I use one of those Flair 58 steel meshes on top of the puck for every shot. Oh, and I’m using Third Wave Water in my machine.
I’ve been pulling a variety of shots every 1-2 days since I got this coffee and I was surprised I was able to start using it the day after roasting. Usually coffee needs a rest of at least a few days, in my experience, to off-gas and to even produce a nice-looking shot, so maybe it’s the preinfusion I can do now with the manual flow control, or maybe this coffee is just an outlier. I was super-bright right out of the gate with a lot of lemon-lime acidity that did seem to mellow out a few days later, so even though I could pull shots right away, I’d recommend 3-5 days rest for this coffee. With the flow control it’s a little tough to get consistent shots and part of my job is to experiment, anyway. I used 19.0g as my start dose for every shot and I was aiming for around 30-35 seconds of contact time for every shot, including whatever pre-infusion I was doing. I pulled a couple of really short shots, coming in around 29-30g in the cup and these tended to have quite a bit of bitterness (which I enjoy) and less fruit in the cup, while more normal shots hit the 37-39g range in the cup. These were bright, with lemon candy acidity and tartness reminiscent of cranberry, true to the label description. Once the coffee was about 2 weeks off-roast I was definitely getting some orange peel notes and hints of orange juice in my shots. I did have a shot that clearly had some channeling in it because I got 48.3g in the cup with a 28 second total shot time, 11 of which were preinfusion, but the coffee tasted really nice, actually, with more orange notes and a lot of cocoa that I wasn’t getting otherwise! A happy accident, perhaps?
As expected, this is a thoroughly bright and modern espresso that I really enjoyed. I don’t make milkies at home, so I am not sure how it does with dairy, however, I imagine it’s fine as this is the espresso the cafe and their other accounts use and most cafes sell a ton of milkies every day and barely any naked espresso shots, so I can’t imagine it’s anything other than good this way. This was a nice introduction to Notion’s coffees and I can’t wait to share their other two in the coming days!