Good morning and welcome to today’s review of Theodore’s Coffee Roasters’ Guava Banana, which contrary to how it sounds, is not a flavored coffee, but rather gets its name from the method of processing used to create some wild flavors, naturally, in the cup. Check it out!
Theodore’s Coffee Roasters website
Purchase this coffee for $22.50/12oz
THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS ANAEROBIC NATURAL GUAVA BANANA
There is no doubt what to expect from a coffee with a name like Guava Banana! This coffee was sourced and roasted by one of my all time favorite roasters, Theodore’s Coffee Roasters located in Michigan. Peeping their Instagram, it looks like Theodore’s has moved again, to Grand Rapids now. They were originally based near Lansing, then resided in Zeeland on the west coast of the state for a couple years and have moved about 45 minutes away to Grand Rapids, which I believe is still Michigan’s second biggest city after Detroit. Theodore’s Coffee Roasters was started in 2013 by Darwin Pavon and named after his grandfather. Darwin is Honduran and is an agronomist by trade, which brings him in contact with hundreds of coffee farmers throughout Latin America. Darwin knows coffee like no one else and after having reviewed tons of coffees from Theodore’s Coffee Roasters, their spot on my “just by anything from them and it will be great” short list is well-earned!
This morning’s coffee is one of two coffees Theodore’s is selling under the Guava Banana name right now. This one is their anaerobic natural and the other is the lactic acid fermentation version, which I will review later this week. So as not to bury the lead, I’ll go into details about this type of processing after my tasting notes below. Anaerobic processing is all the rage among coffee geeks right now, and somewhat controversial as it is not uncommon for some processors to add things to the fermentation tanks to enhance some flavors, like cinnamon (there is even a “Cinnamongate” happening in coffee as people are finding out about this). To the best of my knowledge, this coffee was not fermented with other fruits or additives in the tank.
Guava Banana comes from the El Vergel Estate in Fresno, Tolima, Colombia. The farm sits at around 1450-1500masl and is owned by Martha and her sons, Shady and Elias Bayter. This lot was 100% Caturra variety and it was processed using anaerobic fermentation, which means the whole coffee cherries were fermented in closed tanks that were purged of any oxygen and kept there for about 36 hours in this case. After that, the coffee was dried to around 20-30% humidity, then sealed in GrainPro (a type of plastic) bags and left in the dark for a couple days to continue to ferment. The bags would be opened and the coffee would be laid out on raised “Africa beds” raised mesh beds that allow air to circulate, and what are used in traditional dry processing/natural processing of coffee). The coffee would be bagged again for a couple days and then opened up to dry on raised beds and this process was repeated several times. For the amount of attention and human labor this coffee got during processing, $22.50 for 12oz is a fraction of what this coffee SHOULD have cost!
Brewing and Tasting Notes
I used my standard pourover process for this coffee, which is a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with a Kalita 155 size filter. I’ve recently taken the little rubber blockers out of the bottom of the brewer and it actually doesn’t run any different from when I had just 3 holes exposed. In any case, this is a flat-bottom dripper like a Kalita Wave. My grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3 and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize any agitation of the coffee bed during brewing. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and the total brew time was right about 3:45 including the bloom. As always, I highly recommend letting the cup cool down to around 115-110F before starting to sip at it and take it all the way to room temperature. Your taste buds perceive very little when the coffee is hotter than that.
The bean fragrance before brewing and the aroma from the brewed cup is insane for this coffee. There is definitely super ripe banana notes coming from the cup. As the cup cools there is a sweet maltiness that reminds me of the smell of a big beer like an imperial IPA that has been sitting out for a while (like the last little bit sitting in the bottom of a glass from the day before). There are no hops in the aroma, per se, but that sweetness and “something else” in the aroma remind me of that. At warmer temperatures I was picking up warm spices like baking spices. I’m not sure what it was, specifically, but something in the cinnamon/nutmeg vein. Taking the first couple sips of this coffee, the flavors up front are intense! This is a fruity, fruit-forward coffee as you can imagine with a name like Guava Banana! I’m getting loads of raspberry here, some hints of strawberry, some definite banana esters, and tropical fruits. I can’t remember the last time I tasted guava, so I have no reference for that, specifically, but there is a definite mango vibe and pineapple notes, too. Tropical fruits in coffee have this super sweetness but there is also a tartness to them and I’m finding that tart, crisp acidity here in this coffee, too. Theodore’s sent me the lactic fermentation version of this coffee, too, so I am excited to try that to compare. I feel like this one has a good amount of lactic acid notes, with a bit of creamy, sweet, tart dairy happening in the background in this coffee. As for that warm spicy note in the aroma, I didn’t really get any in the cup, but a few minutes after I was done drinking this coffee, I did feel like there was a hint of nutmeg lingering on my palate.
I only had about 50g of this coffee, so I couldn’t try it as espresso. As intense as this coffee is as a drip I can’t imagine espresso would be the way to go for this coffee, but you never know. As a drip coffee it is super intense, with flavors that just drill into my palate and linger forever. Something unusual about this coffee is that it is simultaneously completely unbalanced toward intense fruitiness and sweetness, yet the acidity and that tartness gives it balance so that it is actually quite easy drinking and doesn’t become cloying on my palate at all. It’s balanced and unbalanced at the same time! LOL As the cup is approaching room temperature I took a larger swig and it was like pure pineapple juice. There is a slight booziness to this coffee, but there is less of an alcohol note than I would expect from a coffee with this intensity of fruits and fermentation.
This coffee is really a standout and a great example of how much processing can influence a coffee. I would love to see a coffee like this available as a “flight” where the same coffee is processed as a washed coffee, a normal natural, and then with these “alternative” processes like anaerobic and lactic acid fermentation so they could be compared side to side. In any case, this coffee definitely lives up to its name, and it’s a tropical fruit bomb for sure! People who are sensitive to ferment notes will want to steer clear of this one, but if you like unusual naturals and crave refreshing, crisp tropical notes in your coffee this is right up your alley.
More About the Processing
I’m sure every producer has a little bit of their own tweak when it comes to processing their coffee from cherries on trees to beans in bags that are transported all over the world. Anaerobic fermentation has been all the rage for the last few years, and is one of many tricks that I believe came into coffee processing from the world of winemaking. Normally, “natural” coffees (aka dry process) are picked off the tree and sorted, then the whole coffee cherries with their two seeds inside (what we call “beans”) are laid out on raised mesh beds to slowly breakdown in the sun. They are circulated to keep fungus, mold, etc from growing on the cherries. As the cherries dry out and breakdown, chemicals are formed that are soaked up by the seeds, which act like little sponges for anything they are in contact with. These chemicals have a lot of similarities with chemicals that give fruits their flavors, so natural process coffees tend to be sweet, fruity and usually to some degree have a fermentation note to them. Some people perceive fermentation flavors in coffee like rotting garbage, but I love them and so do a lot of other people!
Anaerobic processing means that the coffee is fermented in tanks where the oxygen is purged out, so it occurs in an oxygen-free environment. In some cases, producers add things like cinnamon, fruits, etc to the tanks to push certain flavors, and when coffee drinkers found this out they were plenty unhappy about it. I don’t think that’s the case in this coffee, I believe all the flavors here occurred naturally from the processing. Anerobic processing seems to create even more intensity of flavor, and gives the producers more control over things like temperature and pH, which I think allows them to set conditions that will favor some microbes over others to coax certain flavors out of their coffees. This coffee also got several rounds of further aerobic fermentation in plastic bags and being laid out in the sun to prevent mold growth, so it really got about 3 different kinds of fermentation! This labor intensive process is certainly to the benefit of the coffee drinker and $22.50 seems like way too little to pay for coffee that received so much attention!