Like clouds breaking, my sinuses have opened up and I can finally taste things again! Without further ado, because who really knows how long this is going to last, let’s check out Folk City’s Broken Promises, a new coffee for the new year!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17.50/12oz
FOLK CITY COFFEE ROASTERS BROKEN PROMISES
Folk City Coffee Roasters was started by James Arnold in the Upper Bucks region of Pennsylvania (north of Philadelphia and NW of Trenton, along the Delaware River) sometime in 2016. I’ve gotten to drink a fair amount of coffee. I’ve gotten to taste a fair amount of coffee from Folk City and have enjoyed it all, so I was excited to receive this surprise New Year’s package from James and give it a try, then that’s when I started getting sore throats, head colds and chest colds that have just destroyed my ability to taste anything for the better part of the last month. Ugh!
Folk City was started with the singular focus of sourcing and roasting really good coffee for the people who want it. It sounds simple, but this stripped down goal is what creates great coffees without the added pressure of running a cafe and all the other millions of things business owners find themselves doing (although I’m sure there’s more to Folk City’s success than just running a roaster all day).
Broken Promises is a coffee “for all you that have already abandoned your New Year’s resolutions, you can drown your tears in a cup of this delicious coffee. Drink up and forget, buttercup!” Like a lot of Folk City’s previous offerings, the bag features more awesome artwork from Josh Myers (@arguablyhuman on Instagram) with a skull crying out a sea of tears. Whether it’s a hand stamped block letter ink fade or Josh’s incredible artistic vision, I always love Folk City’s bags. They’re keepers!
The coffee itself is a washed coffee from Papua New Guinea. It’s from the Kenale Washing Station in the Western Highlands near Mount Hagen. Mount Hagen is the third largest city in PNG with about 47,000 people living there. The Mount Hagen volcano sits about 15 miles from the city and growing altitude for coffee there is 1600masl or higher. The city sits in the Waghi Valley, another name that may be familiar to PNG aficionados. Folk City gives us tasting notes of, “tangerine, blackberry, pear” for this coffee. I’m using my usual 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. I’m pouring through a Melodrip and using a Knock Aergrind grinder. My cup took about 3:30 to run including a 30 second bloom.
Taking a sip, this is a heavy bodied coffee with lots of sweetness and a dairy-like mouthfeel. There’s something distinctly different about this coffee right off the bat that I can’t quite put my finger on…. an herbaceousness, maybe, something plant-like, but I can’t quite nail it down. There’s honey sweetness at the start of the sip that carries through to the end. Behind that there is balance from some light fruitiness. Tangerine for sure, and this is 100% spot on as a descriptor. The blackberry is definitely there for me, too, but it comes out more in the aftertaste, where it hits BIG. I eat a lot of blackberries and this is it, in coffee form, but in the finish and long aftertaste, rather than in the initial set of flavors. As the cup cools this coffee gets even heavier on my palate, and that makes it really satisfying to drink. There’s something a little savory and maybe even umami about this coffee, and maybe that was the myserious note I was picking up that I mentioned earlier. I’m getting some cocoa notes out of this coffee, too, especially in the cooled cup, and they work great with the rest of this coffee’s flavors.
Is this is what the flavors of cast-aside resolutions and broken promises taste like, bring ’em on! This PNG from Folk City is a solid winner and is balanced, easy-drinking and delicious. A great start to the year from this great roaster, even if it is to be brewed with your tears of regret!