Fall calls out for dark roasts more than any time of year for me, with cold, dark mornings perfect for this style of roast. Cody Coffee impressed me with their darker roasts a few months ago, so let’s check out another one, perfect for the season!
Purchase this coffee for $14/16oz
CODY COFFEE SILVERTIP PEAK
A handful of years ago, Jesse Renfors was a stay-at-home dad with restaurant business experience looking for a new hobby to occupy his time in the town of Cody, Wyoming. Jesse bought a used peanut roaster and tried roasting coffee with it. Before long, he was sharing his new passion with friends and family, then making bike deliveries all over town. He eventually bought the Roast Coach, a camper converted into a mobile coffee shop and, in 2016, expanded to his current permanent location. Online reviews are great for both Cody Coffee’s coffee and, especially, their crepes. Yum!
This morning, I’m taking a look at Silvertip Peak, a single origin Guatemalan coffee that is a dark roast. Jesse says this coffee has notes of, “caramelized sugar and leather” and that thius is a light-bodied Guatemalan. True to Cody Coffee form, that’s about it on the information side of things, other than a statement on the website that says all Cody Coffees are organic and Fair Trade. All Cody coffees are named after local iconic sites and Silvertip Peak sits at 10,645 feet, making it the 799th highest peak in Wyoming.
I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. Grinder is a Knock Aergrind. The aroma in the cup is a good amount of carbon (think graphite dust from sharpening a pencil) with some darkly caramelized sugars. Taking a sip, this is a medium-heavy bodied coffee with a dairy-like mouthfeel. The first few sips are, as expected, pretty carbon-y as this is a dark roast and that’s how it goes with them, but as my palate attenuates I’m getting some nicely caramelized sugars along with all those roast notes. There is an apple-like sweetness to the cup, too, with very little acidity to offset it, again, as expected from a dark roast. The only downside to dark roasts is that this is about all there is to say about most dark roasts! LOL People like them mainly because they are sweet, simple, have nice body, low perceived acidity, etc, but that also doesn’t give them any points for complexity or a lot to write about. That being said, coaxing lots of sugar development out of coffee without making it burned or overly carbon-tasting is not an easy feat and Cody Coffee has a good handle on this. If you match the coffee to the mood and don’t go into Silvertip Peak expecting lots of complexity or other things that simply aren’t possible with a dark roast, then you’ll be plenty happy with what you get. The sun still hasn’t cracked the horizon as I type this, so I’m perfectly happy with a dark roast on this chilly Monday morning!