This morning I have a new roaster to share with you, Quantum Coffee Roasters from San Antonio, Texas. I’m checking out their natural Yirgacheffe this morning, so let’s dive right in!
Purchase this coffee for $7/7oz or $14/14oz
QUANTUM COFFEE ROASTERS ETHIOPIA YIRGACHEFFE
Quantum Coffee Roasters are Fidel and Diana Moreno, full time teachers living in San Antonio, Texas. Fidel is a physics teacher and Diana teaches math and that makes it easy to see where the “quantum” name comes from! The couple were introduced to good coffee by one of their high school students, of all people, who was doing some home roasting. They bought his roaster when he went off to college and the experimentation began for Fidel and Diana. It looks like the Quantum website was started in April 2017 and doing some Instastalking it looks like Quantum does a lot of collaboration with other local businesses from coffee beers to chocolates. Fidel and Diana were kind enough to send me one of their collaboration chocolate bars from Chocollazo, too, so look for a mini-review of that soon!
Quantum doesn’t offer too much in the way of info on this coffee other than that this is a natural process coffee from Yirgacheffe that is, “juicy, jammy” and has flavors of, “dried berries, milk chocolate.” The roast level on the bag is listed as medium. Natural coffees, or dry process coffees, are picked and sorted, then the coffee cherries (about the size of regular cherries from the grocery store) are laid out on raised mesh beds to slowly dry and break down in the sun, like big raisins. The seeds in the middle of the cherries, what we call coffee beans, pick up fruity flavors, sweetness, and some fermentation notes during this process. Typical Ethiopian naturals often have lots of berry flavors and at darker roast levels will pick up a lot of chocolatey notes, too.
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 brewer. I’m using Kalita 155 filters and the filter holder has all but three of the holes blocked. Grinder is a Knock Aergrind.
I’m not getting much in the way of aroma from this coffee, but there are some light raspberry notes flitting around in the air over the cup. This is a medium bodied coffee with a syrupy mouthfeel and right in the front of the sip I’m getting a lot of semisweet chocolate sweetness and strawberries and raspberries in the flavors. I think the raspberry is especially pronounced in this cup and rather than the brighter, more tart notes I’d associate with fresh berries, this is darker and more like dried raspberries and chocolate with raspberries in it. Especially in the second half of the sip, the dark-ish chocolate and raspberry combination is really apparent and this carries into the aftertaste, too. I worked in the shipping department of a Barnes & Noble store for a handful of months after I graduated from college 100 years ago and once in a while I would treat myself with this Godiva dark chocolate and raspberry bar and this reminds me strongly of that. For being a medium roast there is quite a bit of roastiness on my palate with this coffee, which lends a lot of the chocolate notes, I think, and gives a bit of bitterness to balance all this sweetness. There is also some fruity acidity to balance the sweetness in this coffee in the form of lemon candy. The lemon notes in this coffee are definitely more condiment than main dish, but it’s there and it offers some nice dimension and structure to the flavors, hitting the sides of my tongue and surrounding the other flavors throughout the sip. This coffee finishes sweet for me, but the aftertaste has a dryness on my palate that signals a bit of astringency in the cup. I don’t mind it a bit.
This is a nice coffee! It’s a study in contrast, really, with lots of sweetness tempered by some bitterness from the roast, lots of raspberry balanced by darker chocolate notes, etc. When “part-timers” like Fidel and Diana can produce solid, complex drinkers like this, it’s proof that the specialty coffee industry here in the USA is coming into a special time, much like craft beer did about 20 years ago. A very nice introduction to Quantum Coffee Roasters and this Yirgacheffe has me excited for the other coffees they sent, as well as to dig into that Chocollazo bar!