With so much traveling and real work stuff to deal with lately, it’s fantastic to be back in front of the keyboard with a new coffee for you, this time from China by way of Urban Dwellers Coffee!
Previous reviews: Yunnan Fuyan (washed)
URBAN DWELLERS COFFEE YUNNAN NATURAL
Urban Dwellers Coffee is a Springfield, Missouri-based company that seems to have been around for the past couple years. A lot of their profits go to organizations like One Life, and in addition to coffee from China and Sumatra, they sell products made by hand in Nepal. When I first wrote about Urban Dwellers Coffee in March 2018, they were getting their coffee roasted by Ironclad Coffee Roasters (who I’ve also reviewed in the past) in Richmond, Virginia, which I found to be an interesting pairing given the number of coffee roasters in Kansas City, St. Louis, and parts in between. Be that as it may, Urban Dwellers sent me a Huskee Cup to review (soon!) and a small sample bag of this natural process Chinese coffee. I reviewed their Yunnan Fuyan, a washed coffee, back in March 2018 and I’ve had Ross Street Roasting Company’s Fuyan Estate natural from Yunnan, too, back in November. Taking a quick peek at Urban Dwellers’ site, I don’t see this coffee listed, so I don’t know if this is a test batch for an upcoming release or if it’s just currently unavailable, or what?
Nonetheless, the province of Yunnan is where almost all of this Chinese Arabica is coming from. This is also the home province of Pu’er tea, for those people who dabble in the leaf. Yunnan is in southern China, bordering Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar. With the right temperature and highlands hitting 1600-2000 meters above sea level, this province is China’s best chance at growing high quality Arabica coffee. Fuyan Estate grows a lot of Catimor, but I’m not sure if this coffee is from that estate or elsewhere in Yunnan. It’s a natural process coffee, so the cherries are picked by hand and dried in the sun like big raisins, which imparts fruitiness and sweetness to the seeds (what we call coffee “beans”) inside before further processing to break the fruit away.
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 using a Melodrip to control my pours. Filter is a Kalita 155 and my grinder is a Knock Aergrind. This coffee ran fast, consistently under 3:00 even with some grind adjustments.
The fragrance of the dry grounds and aroma in the brewed cup are fruity with some hints of strawberry. Taking a sip I’m greeted by a bright, fruity, sweet cup that has a lot more of that strawberry in it along with a hint of tartness and some lemon acidity. This is a really fruity cup, and maybe that’s just because I’ve been drinking either lifeless hotel coffee or lots of espresso lately, and not so much filter coffee, or maybe it’s because it really is just a bright and punchy cup! There is honey sweetness in the base of this cup with a big wash of strawberry lemonade in the middle. I’m getting some tropical-ness out of the fruits in the cooling cup, too, with definite flavors of pineapple, enhanced by that slight tartness in the cup, too. The finish is pineapple-y and there’s a fruity, candy-like note left on my palate in the aftertaste. When I had, presumably, the same coffee from Ross Street in November I got lots of apple and a hint of strawberry and even some banana esters in the cup, so either this is a totally different coffee or the roasting profile coaxed something completely different out of it!
Either way, this is a nice cup! It’s bright and refreshing and feels like a nice complement to the springtime weather we’re getting here. It’s sweet and tart at the same time, which I rather like, and it’s the most assertive of the three Chinese coffees I’ve had to date. I hope Urban Dwellers picks up more of this and gets it on offer soon! Yum!