This morning I’m taking a look at a very unique low caffeine coffee from The Barn in Berlin, Germany. This is a rare variety that I’ve never even heard of, much less tasted, before, so without further ado, let’s slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for €18/250g ($20.46/8.8oz)
Blog post all about low-caf Laurina
THE BARN LAURINA NATURAL
The Barn in Berlin, Germany, is one of my favorite roasters. They have multiple cafes in Berlin and made international news a few years ago mainly because of their “no baby stroller” policy in cafes, but there is way, way more to this roaster than that. They have great sourcing and top notch roasting and maybe someday I will make it to Berlin and will be able to comment on the cafes, too! They recently sent me a small sample packet of a very unique coffee, Laurina, from the Daterra estate in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Laurina is is a variety of coffee that has become very rare. It is naturally low in caffeine, having 0.3-0.5% caffeine levels compared to the 1.4% level typically found in Arabica coffee varieties. Caffeine is protective compound in plants that discourages bugs from wanting to chomp on them. Because of its low caffeine levels, the Laurina variety, discovered in the 1700’s, has proven very difficult to grow. Daterra has been researching, growing and adapting Laurina in various plots on their estate for 12 years and because of the finicky nature of this variety, the prices for Laurina microlots are high. Daterra does an annual auction of their best and most unique coffees every year. In 2018, their highest-priced lot was for a Laurina that went for $141.10/pound, and Emi Fukahori won the 2018 Brewers Cup with a Daterra-grown Laurina, too. The Barn scored two lots of Laurina this year, one natural and one washed, and they are roasting the natural one now and will release the washed version later in the year. If you don’t want to read any further, just buy it. It’s amazing!
Last bit of education on terminology on “natural” and “washed.” Coffee is a fruit, and coffee cherries are about the size of grapes or cherries and usually have two seeds in the middle. These seeds are broken out of the fruit, cleaned off, dried, and roasted into what we call coffee “beans.” There are a whole lot of ways to accomplish that process and two of the primary ways are “washing” (wet process) and “natural” (dry process). Natural coffees are picked and hand sorted, then are laid out on raised mesh beds to slowly dry out and break down in the sun and air, like big raisins. This tends to create a lot of fruitiness from the chemicals that are created as breaking down and fermentation happen inside the fruits, and this is soaked up like a sponge by the seeds. Washed coffees have the skins broken and the sticky mucilage inside removed in water-filled fermentation tanks, then the seeds are laid out to dry without all that fruit clinging to them. Washed coffees tend to have a “cleaner” flavor (although this Laurina is totally free of fermentation notes, as far as I am concerned) and in some ways be more complex. I love them both!
The fragrance on the grounds is amazing… fruity, berries, like Fruity Pebbles only natural-smelling and good! The aroma from the cup is also great, starting out in the freshly-brewed cup like rooibos tea and changing more into raspberry as it cools. Taking a sip, this is a coffee that is bursting with flavor and it may be the most “African” Brazilian natural I’ve tasted, although that is a burst of fruitiness in the front end that quickly mellows to milk chocolate for the rest of the sip. As the cup cools, it gets more cohesive and mellows out in all the best ways, and this coffee also gets a lot more unique as I continue tasting. This is a medium-bodied coffee with a dairy-like mouthfeel. There is honey sweetness throughout the cup and this is a sweet tasting coffee from beginning to end. There is a lot of tropical fruit here. Guava is a good descriptor and I’m getting a little mango, too, and pineapple in the second half of the sip. There is a silky milk chocolate note to the finish that carries long into the aftertaste with all those tropical fruits, too. Those tropical fruits give this coffee a slight tartness like they do in real life, giving this a lactic note. In a blind test I think I probably would’ve called this a lactic coffee from Colombia’s La Palma y El Tucan, probably. There is great balance between all that fruit and the sweetness in the cup.
This is an amazing coffee! One of the best Brazilian naturals I’ve ever had. Brazilian coffees, for me, are somewhat restrained across the board and this one is really sweet, really bright and really fruity in ways I’ve not previously experienced with Brazilian naturals. It’s a work of art, truly! And for those people worried about the freshness of ordering coffee from Europe, I revisited the last of my sample as I was writing this and even at 6 weeks out, this coffee is still absolutely stunning, so I wouldn’t let that worry you one bit.