Good morning and welcome to today’s review, just in time for Christmas, of Notion’s Tundra. This is an unusual take on what a Christmas blend or holiday blend can be and I was hooked from just the dry fragrance from the beans in the bag. I can’t wait to dive in and actually drink this one, so let’s check it out!
NOTION COFFEE TUNDRA
Notion is a roaster located in Grandview, Missouri, on the south side of the sprawling Kansas City metro area. They grew out of Cafe Main, which had been located in Grandview for years and closed its doors a couple years ago. The brothers who own Notion purchased Cafe Main from their previous employers and relocated the cafe to International House of Prayer University’s campus, rebranding it recently as “prefix.” It’s a big cafe with lots of space and the fact that it’s at IHOP-U is only weird if you want it to be! Smartly, they put the roasting business under a different name to gain more appeal with wholesale accounts. Notion roasts something like 300lbs of coffee per week on a 2.5 kilo roaster and the whole roasting operation, including the roaster itself, packaging and shipping, and green storage occupies a few hundred square feet in the back of prefix. right now! They are upgrading to a much larger roaster and moving to a space with several thousands of square feet soon, so we’re going to see a lot of big things from Notion in coming years.
One of the coffes they hooked me up with on a recent visit is this Tundra limited holiday blend. At $22/10oz it’s not a budget coffee, but from the fragrance from the beans in the bag I could tell it’s something special and I know the gang at Notion are very proud of their somewhat unique take on the classic Christmas/holiday blend. Since I already talked with Johnathan at Notion about this coffee during my visit, the cat’s already out of the bag for me about the flavors, so I’ll share the details of the coffee with you here instead of after my tasting notes like I usually do. Your typical Christmas-time blend tends to lean toward being a crowd-pleaser, with a decent amount of roast, lots of caramel sweetness, nuttiness, chocolate notes… the kind of thing you can throw into anyone’s Mr. Coffee and make a pot of coffee everyone will enjoy. With Tundra, Notion went the opposite direction, combining coffees to bring out flavors like ginger ale, cranberry sauce and strawberry covered strawberries. They wanted a coffee that would remind people of the decadence of the fruity sweets that are common around this holiday and they wanted to make it unique and memorable.
To achieve this goal, Notion have combined three coffees into Tundra. They are a natual anaerobic process from Finca El Bosque in Nicaragua (also available as a single origin from Notion currently), a Colombian natural process coffee Finca Puerto Alegre (also available as a single origin from Notion) and a washed Ethiopian from Geodo. Notion say the Colombian component is the “craziest and fruitiest coffee Notion has ever offered” and both the Nicaraguan and Colombian components are available right now as single origin offerings, too.
I am brewing my cup this morning using a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper. This is set up to be a three-hole, flat-bottom dripper like a Kalita Wave and it uses Kalita’s 155 size filters. My grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3 and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee during brewing. I did a 37 second bloom and the brew time, not including the bloom, came in at 4:00 and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I knew I’d like this coffee from the dry fragrance in the bag, which was Frankenberry and Booberry cereals mixed up with a hint of funky ferment.
The aroma from the cup is quite similar to the dry fragrance from the beans. There is a heavy “Ethiopian natural” vibe dominating the aroma with a healthy amount of ferment coming through, too. I’m reminded of a mellower version of one of the most memorable coffees I’ve ever reviewed, a Funky Natural that was grown and processed by Mierisch Farms in Nicaragua. The aroma is fruity, berry-forward and accompanied by a lot of ferment notes, which I really enjoy in coffees. Some unlucky people unfortunately perceive ferment notes as rotting food/trash and I feel so sorry for them, but for the rest of us, this ferment is that slightly funky, almost boozy note you get biting into the heaviest, juiciest, maybe one day over-ripe tropical fruit. Taking a sip, things are consistent, for sure, and that ferment I love so much comes through really nicely on the front end of the flavors. I’m getting slightly overly ripe strawberry and raspberry here for sure and these are definitely the dominant notes in the coffee. In the tail end of the sip and into the finish I do get some milk chocolate on my palate and this plays very nicely with the strawberry in the cup. This is a medium+ bodied cup that coats my palate nicely and I’m getting some enjoyable acidity that almost reads as effervescence or “sparkling” on the sides of my tongue. I can see where the ginger ale descriptor Notion include on the box comes from as in the finish and aftertaste there is a sweet coating on my palate and in my throat that reminds me of the post-sip feel of a full-sugar soda. As I write this and it has been about a minute between sips, I can definitely taste ginger here in the aftertaste, too, and I really like it.
I love this coffee. As the cup is approaching room temp I’m getting nice flavors of overripe pineapple (like if it sat one day longer you would have had to toss it into the bin) that I really enjoy. I’m a sucker for naturals in general and for big ferment notes in coffee and it has been a long time since I had one that embraced the funk to this degree, so I am really loving it! It’s fruity, complex, but also easily drinkable and FUN, which isn’t something I say very often. How can coffee be fun? Well, Tundra! LOL There’s a good chance more than a couple people at a holiday gathering will not enjoy this blend, and that was a risky move on Notion’s part for their holiday blend offering, but I love the move and I definitely respect small business owners who create what they want. I couldn’t be happier, so I’ll assume this was a gift from Notion with my exact palate in mind! LOL