Good morning and welcome to today’s review of Theodore’s Coffee Roasters’ Guava Banana, but this time, I’m checking out the lactic fermentation version. Last week I shared the anaerobic fermentation version, which I really enjoyed, so I’m excited to compare this one!
Theodore’s Coffee Roasters website
Purchase this coffee directly for $27/12oz, $15/6oz or $100/5lbs
Link to Guava Banana Anaerobic review
THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS GUAVA BANANA LACTIC
Theodore’s Coffee Roasters are one of my favorite roasters and they confidently sit in my “order anything from them and it will be good” list when people ask me what’s good. Theodore’s was started in 2013 by Darwin Pavon, who is Honduran by birth and works throughout Latin America as an agronomist with coffee growers. To say he understands every aspect of coffee is an understatement, and all of that knowledge goes into sourcing excellent coffees and roasting them to perfection in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Theodore’s is currently selling two versions of “Guava Banana,” which is NOT a flavored coffee. Guava Banana is a lot of red and yellow Caturra varietal grown at El Vergel farm in Tolima, Colombia. The farm is run by brothers Elias and Shady Bayter and they are doing some really interesting things with some of their coffees. As you may know by now, coffee “beans” are actually seeds that grow inside coffee cherries. There are usually two seed in each cherry, which gives coffee beans their half dome shape. For coffee to be roasted, it needs to be removed from the fruit and processed (cleaned, dried, etc) beforehand. There are a ton of ways to process coffees and you don’t often get opportunities to try the same lot of coffee that has been processed multiple ways, so these two versions of Guava Banana are a unique opportunity for coffee geeks right now! I can definitely these two coffees are like night and day, and I would highly recommend buying them both and trying them out so you can see just how much processing affects flavor.
The anaerobic version was super fruit forward with lots of tropical sweetness and tartness. You’ll see my tasting notes below, but suffice to say that lactic acid version is like drinking a completely different coffee. This lactic version of Guava Banana is also an anerobic (oxygen free) process, but in this case the fermentation tank is dosed with bacteria that convert sugars into lactic acid. Bacteria like lactobacillus acidophilus, found in yogurt, is an example of a lactic acid bacteria. So, lactic fermentation coffees tend to end up with some lactic acid characteristics in them. Usually this is a “soft” acidity with a bit of a dairy like sweetness and mild tartness to it. Hard to describe, but delicious!
I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of
In the bag, these beans have a nice fragrance… I’m getting strawberry cereal like Frankenberry, and a nice chocolatey note, too. Something weird happened after grinding and I took another smell of the dry grounds and I got the same aromas but also something that shocked and stung my nose, which I have never experienced before. It definitely irritated my nose as it got stuffy and I started sneezing a lot about 10 minutes later, so that was super strange! Something must’ve off-gassed from the dry grounds that just did not agree with me. The aroma from the cup has a lot of that strawberry milk or Frankenberry cereal character to it and there’s a hint of whatever that was that sort of shocked my nose when I took a big snort of the dry fragrance, too.
Taking a sip, this coffee is full of surprises. That strawberry note is here in spades but this is an especially chocolate-forward coffee which I didn’t expect at all. I would never guess in a million years if I didn’t already know that this was the same coffee, just with different processing, as the anaerobic Guava Banana. As I continue to sip, my palate is getting quickly attenuated to that really chocolatey flavor that dominated my first 2-3 sips and this chocolate note is more of an undertone and way more subtle now. It comes out quite a bit more in the aftertaste, though, and writing this about 30 seconds out from my last sip, I’m getting mostly chocolate on my palate. This choco note is cocoa-y, reminding me of Dutch process chocolate, but has some sweetness, too, so there’s a reminder of milk chocolate here for me, too. The strawberry is really nice and is getting more “natural” and less like strawberry flavoring as the cup cools. There’s a hint of ferment here but the ferment in this cup is a lot less than it was in the anerobic version of this coffee. As the cup is cooling some new tropical notes are coming in now. I’m getting a big, BIG mango note, a hint of pineapple tartness, and something that reminds me strongly of coconut of all thing! What a wild coffee! There is definitely a tartness coming through the coffee now and this is most likely from the lactic fermentation. There’s a dairy vibe here and I think this is where I’m finally noticing the lactic acid fermentation. This coffee started out with a medium-light body and is “consolidating” as it cools to have a medium to medium-heavy body for me. There’s a substantial “coating” effect with this coffee, too, that reminds me a little of an oatmeal stout. I always seem to end up comparing lactic coffees to milk stouts, which have lactose (“milk sugar”) added, and I suppose that’s for a reason.
This is a really good coffee, totally different from the other version of Guava Banana and I would highly recommend picking them both up. The anaerobic version was way more in-your-face and was anything but subtle. It was super fruity and aggressive in that way. I wouldn’t call the lactic version subtle by any stretch, either, but it’s definitely a little more nuanced and has a less likely combination of flavors that still end up working well with each other. I didn’t expect for this coffee to be a chocolate bomb like it is, but yet it’s still bright and fruity and has that lactic tartness and dairy nature to it. None of this should really work together and yet it does, beautifully! If I could only choose one, I think this lactic Guava Banana would be the one for me. The way it is unique is harder to find in coffee, in my opinion, and I just love what I’m getting from this cup, but they are both bangers and I’d recommend getting 6 ounce bags of both of them so you can see just how much processing affects what’s in your cup. The fact that these taste like COMPLETELY different coffees is amazing. This is one of the most enjoyable coffees I’ve consumed in months and it’s just hitting me in all the right places this morning!
What Theodore’s Coffee Roasters Says About This Coffee
Theodore’s gives us a flavor profile of, “Peach, guava, strawberry jam, milk chocolate” for this coffee, so I was definitely in the ballpark with my tasting notes. I don’t know that I have ever tasted guava, but the theme of “tropical + strawberry + milk chocolate” is what this coffee is all about. They say this coffee gets a controlled temperature fermentation that lasts 48-60 hours with careful pH monitoring, then that is followed by drying the coffee in a series of stalls that are held at different humidity levels to add more complexity to the coffee. The coffee is finished in a silo for 45 days to dry out and stabilize.