Good morning and welcome to today’s review of a fresh Guatemalan coffee from my excellent friends at S&W Craft Roasting. I’ve been drinking this coffee as espresso for the last couple days and can’t wait to dive into it as a filter brew, so without futher ado…
Purchase this coffee directly from S&W for $16.40/lb (16oz!)
S&W CRAFT ROASTING GUATEMALA LA GARITA SHB
S&W Craft Roasting is one of my favorite coffee roasters for good reason. They work hard to source beans, they handle them really well, roast them with expertise, and sell them for probably the best value going in specialty coffee today. When you go to S&W’s website you’ll see no frills. When you open your box you’ll see gold or black valve bags with simple labeling. The money you spend with S&W doesn’t go into a flashy website, high-end packaging or lots of marketing. Instead, you’ll find your dollars coming back to you in what’s inside those humble bags. As of this writing, S&W has 11 coffees available and the most expensive selection, for a pound (16oz), is $16.55. It’s hard to believe, really! S&W does all of this from their operation in the tiny town of Coatesville, Indiana, proving that good coffee can come from anywhere. I really hope you’ll give S&W a try because they are one of the best kept secrets in craft coffee today!
This morning’s coffee from S&W Craft Roasting is their Guatemala La Garita SHB. SHB is a common thing you’ll see in Central American coffees and it means “strictly hard bean” which generally means relatively high altitude growing conditions. This is lot of Bourbon and Caturra varieties grown by Petronilo Martinez at El Aguacatal. This is a washed coffee grown at 1675 meters above sea level. So as not to bias my palate, I’ll share more notes about the coffee after my own tasting notes below.
For brewing, I’m using my standard setup of a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper. The Origin is a flat bottom pourover dripper like a Kalita Wave et al. and it uses Kalita 155 size filters. My grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3 and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize coffee bed agitation during brewing. This coffee got a 40 second bloom and the total brew time including bloom came in just under 4:00.
I’m not getting a ton in the aroma from this coffee, and what I am getting is mostly lightly caramelized sugars which I certainly won’t complain about! Taking a sip, this is a medium to medium+ bodied coffee for me and this coffee has “Guatemala” practically written all over it (if you could write on coffee and etc you know). it’s sweet but fruity, balanced, crisp. Taking a sip I get a light caramel sweetness in the base with the higher fruit notes coming in shortly after and sticking around for the rest of the sip. A lot of the fruits I get from Guatemalan coffees lean more toward apple, pear, things like that, but this La Garita has a lot of citrus notes for me. I’m getting tangerine here, some candied lemon peel and a hint of grapefruit pith, too. This is a SUPER easy-drinking coffee for me and I am finding myself taking frequent gulps to the point where I need to slow down or I’ll be through my cup before I’ve taken complete notes! With all this citrus you’d think this would be a super bright acid bomb, but the citrus notes are more like midrange. They’re certainly bright and have a nice intensity, but there is a roundness to this fruity element in the coffee that keeps these acidic notes in a nice balance with the sweetness. And, they add to the sweetness in a way, too, just like fruits do. This is a very “tactile” cup for me as the tangerine and grapefruit pith sort of spread out and lie on my tongue like a blanket while that sharper lemon peel flavor hits the sides of my tongue and cheeks. They all “drill in” with a lot of intensity and I really enjoy that. In the almost-room temperature cup there is a TINY hint of roast in the back of my throat with some sips, but this is a light, refreshing, crisp roast for sure. There is some green apple coming through at the end of the sip for me and into the finish. The finish is a little dry on my palate and leaves a rough texture on my palate, so I guess we could technically say there is a little astringency to the finish and aftertaste, but it’s not off-putting in the least for me with this coffee and I kind of like the dry finish and clean aftertaste on my palate between sips.
As always, this is an impressive selection from S&W Craft Roasting. Nick and Charlie know their coffees and go through great lengths to cup until they find the best roast for their beans. It always shows in coffees like La Garita because it’s intense, clean, delicious, easy drinking and balanced all at the same time. A winner for sure!
More About This Coffee
S&W says this coffee is a “medium bodied cup with apricot and rose flavors.” In retrospect I could see apricot a little. I didn’t get any florals from this cup, personally, but my bag has a little age and florals are usually the thing that drops off pretty early. It’s funny how the brain works (and why I go to great lengths to not read about my coffees or even see the label if I can help it) because now all I can taste on my palate minutes after my last sip is apricot, LOL. El Aguacatal is run by Petronilo Martinez and his son, Petronilo Jesus. It was founded by Petronilo’s father in 1958, so the family has a long tradition of coffee growing.