Continuing to globetrot with Theodore’s Coffee Roasters, I’ve headed to Honduras after visiting Ethiopia with my last Theordore’s review! This morning’s coffee from our friends in Owosso, Michigan promises spices, chocolate and blackberries, so let’s check it out!
Purchase this coffee directly for $18/12oz
Theodore’s Ethiopia Keneon Chire review
Theodore’s Guatemala Esquipulas review
THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS HONDURAS FINCA QUETANQUIRA
Theodore’s Coffee Roasters are located in Owosso, Michigan, toward the center of the state between Flint and Lansing. The company was started by Darwin Pavon in 2014 who rose from poverty in Honduras himself with the help of the Micah Project. Darwin’s is a great success story for this leadership and life skills training program and sales of every coffee go back into the Micah Project so Darwin can continue to help others who are in the same situation he was in. I can only imaghine Honduran coffees are extra special for the gang at Theodore’s, then!
Today’s coffee comes from Finca Quetanquira, located at the foot of a natural reserve called Misoco Mountain. Coffee here grows between 1200-1450masl under the shade of trees planted for reforestation. This is a washed coffee and the producers at Finca Quetanquira begin processing it within six hours of picking. Theodore’s gives us flavor notes of, “spices, chocolate and sweet berries with notes of rich dark chocolate, blackberries and a floral finish.” Sounds dang good! I used my standard 1:16 pourover ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino. My Handground is set to 3.5 for grind size and I brewed my samples from Theodore’s with Third Wave Water.
At warmer temperatures I was getting a fair amount of roast notes from this medium-light roast. As the cup cooled the acidity picked up a little bit and rewarded me with a subtle berry note (not the same level you’d get from an Ethiopian natural, for example). There was a little tartness to the berry-like acidity with a flavor note that did remind me of blackberry. I find rope blackberries to have a floral, sometimes almost perfumed flavor and that’s what I was getting in this cup. If I forced myself to wait a fairly long time between sips (a minute or two) I was getting a lot of that blackberry note in the long finish with a pleasant acidity throughout my entire palate. It was a cool feeling! There is a decent amount of roast development on this coffee and so the roast notes are there, giving a dark caramelized sweetness and some cocoa tones to the cup, too. Even though I associated the acidity with the berry notes, it’s sort of an amalgam of tart green apple and lemon candy. It gives needed boost to the overall flavors of the coffee but I wouldn’t call the acidity in this cup a main player. Rather it’s more of an accent in this case.
This is a nice, somewhat different cup of coffee compared to what I remember of the other Honduran coffees I’ve had. It’s sweet and clean and quite complex with the berry and roasty chocolate notes. But, I’d say the floral components of this cup add most of the complexity, for my palate. While this tastes like an unusual cup to me, it’s not unfamiliar or alien, either, and I really enjoyed it. Sometimes more complex cups like this can be a bit overwhelming on the palate and I didn’t find that with this Finca Quetanquira at all. It was pretty easy to drink despite its complexity, but there are certainly rewards for drinking this coffee unaccompanied by food and with some time to ponder the flavors between sips!