Good morning and welcome to today’s review of a fresh coffee from local Kansas City roasters, Blip Roasters! It has been a while since I posted and a REALLY long while since I checked out any coffee from Blip, so thanks for coming along for the ride!
Purchase this coffee directly from Blip for $18/12oz
BLIP ROASTERS ORGANIC MEXICO CHIAPAS
I knew it had been a while since I had reviewed any coffee from local Kansas Citians, Blip Roasters, but looking through my blog history it has been more than a “while…” 2015 was the last time I featured any coffee from these guys, so this is a long time overdue! Blip Roasters was started in Kansas City in 2014 by Ian Davis with the intent of being a strictly wholesale operation. Ian located Blip in the West Bottoms area of Kansas City, Missouri, which used to be the old stockyards and shipping hub of the city in the early 1900’s. In 2014, the West Bottoms was still pretty rustic. My wife and I got married down there in a very cool space when there was still very little other than artists’ lofts and husks of buildings, but today the Bottoms is home to dozens of antique stores and other businesses while still retaining a lot of its gritty, industrial charm. I spent a few hours talking to Ian and roasting a batch of coffee with him very early on. He had a vision of combining another of his passions, motorcycles, with coffee, somehow, and that has really been a theme in Blip’s business model in subsequent years.
Pretty shortly after Ian started roasting in the West Bottoms he had some light retail and a tasting room and eventually built the space out to include a sizable deck and a proper coffee bar with espresso machine. With the industrial loading dock in the front, it looked really cool, and Ian’s involvement in the local motorcycle community had the place hopping on weekends and during group rides and meetups. If I recall correctly, however, the space caught fire not too soon after things started picking up and Ian moved operations to another place in the West Bottoms. I was just doing some photography there earlier this week and the large handpainted “COFFEE” sign above the old deck space can still be seen. Hopefully in another 100 years urban explorers will still be poking around the Bottoms looking for remnants of the past and they’ll see Ian’s big letters still painted on those bricks! If memory serves me, the second space was really big and was shared with some other businesses. In 2019, Ian opened a second location for Blip on Troost Avenue. In its heyday, Troost was the main drag for businesses in Kansas City, with a tram line that ran most of its lengths. It was the center of the city, running north/south, and everything happened on Troost. For the past 20-30 unfortunately, it is known more as the invisible border between the wealthier and poorer parts of the city, an almost palpable dividing line between “white” and “Black” Kansas City. I’m happy to say that line is getting blurrier and blurrier as each year goes by, and Troost is seeing some nice revitalization with lots of Black-owned business opening up, as well as attracting coffee companies like Blip, Oddly Correct, and artisans like Blackhole Bakery, to name but a few.
In hindsight, 2019 was a landmark year, of course, with rumors of lockdowns coming from California late in the year. The realities of Covid-19 didn’t really hit Kansas City until Feb/March of 2020, but long story short, Blip Roasters’ time on Troost came to a premature end when Ian had no choice but to close down. Not only that, but he closed down the main located in the West Bottoms, and the future of Blip Roasters looked uncertain, at best, like it did for pretty much everyone. During the Covid shutdown, Ian and his partners in Blip Roasters had time to re-center, plan and make a comeback, again in the West Bottoms neighborhood, but this time, far out on the outskirts of the area. Blip’s current location, which I have yet to visit myself, takes some intentionality to get to as it’s on the northern border of the Bottoms with some very industrial neighbors. This also means, though, that it’s away from the hustle and bustle of busy weekends when thousands of people pour into the Bottoms looking for treasures from eras past! Blip offers an oasis of respite if you need to take a breather from hours of antiquing, or a good spot to get fueled up for the day. And there’s actual parking there! The motorcycle vibe is still strong there and this iteration of Blip Roasters seems to be the closest to the vision Ian shared with me so many years ago when we roasted a batch of coffee on a cold winter day in raw, unheated industrial space!
Wait, Isn’t This Supposed to be About Coffee???
Oh yeah! Talk about burying the lead! Today’s coffee is an organic Mexican coffee from Chiapas. As usual, I’ve done everything I can to stay blinded to any details so as to not influence my palate, so I’ll share my brewing routine and notes and then give you any details I can find about the coffee from Blip’s website. Mexican coffees as a general rule tend to be pretty low key, not super complex or really bright, just good solid drinkers that can take a decent amount of roast, so my expectations are calibrated accordingly. I should interject here that I like Blip’s packaging. Last time I saw it it was a pretty plain Kraft paper bag. In 2015 Blip and another local roaster, Thou Mayest, collaborated on a coffee that featured a really cool letterpressed box done by Survival Letterpress. That box featured a pattern that is actually a map of part of Kansas City and it’s cool to see Blip keeping up this aesthetic, albeit in much more affordable printing instead of letterpress. It’s a nice look and an homage to the city that Ian obviously loves.
I’m using my usual pourover routine for this coffee, which is a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water. I’m using a Trinmity Origin brewing vessel, which is a flat-bottomed pourover similar to a Kalita Wave or many others. I use Kalita 155 filters and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee bed during brewing. My grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3. I gave this coffee a 30 second bloom and the total brew time, bloom included, was right about 3:30.
I’m getting really nice caramel aromas from the Origin carafe right after brewing and it just struck me how long it has been since I actually brewed a cup of coffee instead of going straight to my espresso machine! For the past couple months I have been absolutely focused on espresso, so this is a nice change of pace already. As the cup cools there is still a caramel aroma here and I’m getting some roasty notes, too. Taking an initial sip, the cup is still a little warm for when coffees really open up for me, but I’m getting caramel, some chocolatey notes, some hints of roasted nuts and general roastiness here. I’m also getting a faint flavor that reminds me of cinnamon a bit. As my cup is cooling, this coffee is opening up nicely. It’s a little less roasty now and there is some brightness and acidity happening in the coffee, too, that was not present in the warmer cup. There is a soft citrus component here now that reminds me a little of very dilute orange juice. The citrus acidity hits my cheeks and gives me a bit of a juicy feeling on my palate (“juicy” in coffee = encourages salivation and taking another sip). There’s still a nice caramel base to the cup and I’m getting some cinnamon-like notes in the finish and aftertaste still, too. The roasted nuts/general roastiness I was getting is really minimal, so either my palate attenuated to it or that flavor isn’t happening in the cooler cup now. In the long aftertaste there is a really good brown sugar character I’m getting. As the cup continues to cool that orange-y, citrusy acidity is getting a little more tropical, taking on some hints of pineapple for me.
This is a really pleasant coffee. At first I was pretty underwhelmed, but as the cup cooled to “lukewarm” it really opened up a lot and became surprisingly complex and bright, yet very balanced and drinkable. As it’s closing in on room temperature I’m digging it even more with its sweetness, citrusy high end and tropical notes. Definitely the best coffee I’ve had from Blip in my limited experience with them and a nice surprise for a Mexican coffee. YUM! This is definitely a surprise coffee being from Mexico, for me. I generally like Mexican coffees for their easy drinking and simplicity, but this one has more complexity than I expected and is just a delight to drink.
Details About the Coffee
There’s not a lot of info about this coffee on Blip’s site, however, it is a washed, organic coffee from the Chiapas region of Mexico, which is the southern “state” of Mexico that borders Guatemala. This lot contains a bunch of varietals including Catucai, Acaia, Mundo Novo, Bourbon and Yellow Catuai, grown at 900-1200 meters above sea level. Blip gives us tasting notes of, “Caramel, milk chocolate, roasted almond” and I would agree with all three of those, especially in the warmer cup.