In this edition: six coffees released this past week & a whole bunch of delicious Kenyan-tasting SL28 coffees not grown in Kenya.
Not in this edition: why San Franciscans have had enough with the dogs.
Thanks to everyone who forwarded the last edition to their friends. Growing this thing is such a passion of mine, so I am seriously grateful. The lucky winner of the contest is a subscriber in the great city of Youngstown, Ohio who wishes to remain anonymous. S/he chose a bag of the Thunguri SL28/SL34 from Passenger, a fitting choice given today's discussion below.
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Welcome to the fifth edition of the coffee index.
Over the past seven days, I added another 83 coffees to the spreadsheet. Total coffees tracked to date = 2209. Here are six favorites from the past week:
- A few days after the 2016 presidential election here in America, I set off for Tanzania to volunteer for a month at the Rift Valley Children's Village near the town of Karatu. The story behind it is an incredible one (it received the 60 Minutes treatment). Little did I know, but I was roughly eight miles from Gaia Estate, where this Kent variety coffee was grown. Push x Pull is the roaster here, and fully details the work of third-generation farmers Neel and Kavita Vohora at the link above. Tasting notes: Plum, cola, orange bitters.
- It feels a bit odd to feature the same roaster twice in a week, but screw it, this is my newsletter and that's what I want to do. Push x Pull dropped this Typica on Monday, and I couldn't resist writing about a jasmine flower powder co-ferment — grown in Indonesia, no less! This comes from an exporting group called Central Sumatera Coffee that only started sending coffee into the United States last year. I can't say I've loved the Indonesian coffees I've tasted, but this one intrigues me, both because it doesn't trace its genetics to robusta, and jasmine flowers seem like a lovely way to ferment a coffee. Tasting notes: Jasmine, milk tea, candied ginger.
- If you thought the $55 cup of American-grown gesha was expensive, put on your big boy pants because this was the week that Hydrangea listed a $228 cup of coffee for sale. I refuse to write about it. Instead, here's a more modest offering they dropped on Sunday — a double anaerobic thermal shock castillo from Samuel Diego Bermudez that has a tasting note that sent me straight to google. Tasting notes: Osmanthus, lychee, Kasugai gummies.
- Lynsey Hayes at Sorellina Coffee in Edmonton, Alberta says she's been wanting to work with coffees from Corpachi Estate in Chiriqui, Panama for a long time. A livestock farm for generations, Edgar Gutierrez planted coffee on its slopes in 2016. I think it's sometimes nice to feature Panamanian coffees that are not geshas. This one is a natural processed pacamara variety, and Lynsey is offering y'all 15 percent off of it (or anything else) with the code COFFEEINDEX. Tasting notes: Meyer lemon, Tahitian vanilla, blood orange, cooked brown sugar.
- Carlos Aguilera Franceschi's Carmen Estate has long been a mainstay in Best of Panama auctions. Recently, the third-generation producer sold the farm and established Franceschi Coffee, where Hatch says he'll focus on smaller lots. Speaking of Panamanian coffees that are not geshas — oops, this is a washed gesha from Chiriqui. Tasting notes: Mandarin, peach, guava, orange cream.
- Did I choose to feature this coffee from producer Edinson Muñoz because his farm is called Finca Pensilvania? Sort of, though "Pensilvania" has nothing to do with the state I'm from (obviously). I've also long loved Madcap, given the amount of time I've spent in Michigan for work (13 trips since 2022). That said, they don't release a ton of different coffees every year, and this Wush Wush variety (along with a gesha from Muñoz as well) both sound phenomenal. Tasting notes: Grapefruit, papaya, cane sugar.
One of the reasons why I somewhat inefficiently maintain a spreadsheet of coffees from almost 200 roasters worldwide is so that I can spend time sorting it and looking for trends and unusual combinations of variety, origin and process. I was messing around with it and noticed that of the 135 SL28's on the list that are currently for sale, 20 percent of them are not grown in Kenya.
For my dad and next door neighbors and anyone else who isn't deep down the coffee rabbit hole like many of us, World Coffee Research has you covered on the variety’s history and development in Kenya. One thing I didn’t realize until reading that article is that you can leave an SL28 tree untended for decades and bring it back to successful production. Wild.
The non-Kenyan SL28's come in just about every flavor you can imagine – washed, anaerobic washed, natural, yellow honey, fermented with mint, fermented with yeast, etc. etc. They’re grown in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Uganda, Honduras, Panama (see below), Colombia and India. Right on cue, Drop in Stockholm, uh, dropped this anaerobic natural SL28 from El Salvador on Monday. And yesterday, Cat Nap opened orders of this washed SL28 from Honduras to non-subscribers and Valor listed this double anaerobic natural from Costa Rica. If you know of any other great examples, shoot me an e-mail.
Now I’m just a guy who writes an e-mail about coffee. I know very little. So I hit up Will Warren, the owner of Mirra Coffee in Kingston, New York (and, I learned, a 25-year-old student at Bard). He is not just a guy who writes an e-mail about coffee. In fact, he kind of blew me away with how effortlessly he rattled off very specific details about things, like who placed fourth in the 2020 Costa Rica Cup of Excellence competition. So yeah, he’s very smart.
He also has an SL28 from Yenitzin de Aguilar in Boquete, Panama that I had a bag of in my cabinet right around the time it fooled nearly everyone in last season’s Leaderboard competition. If you want to try a bag of it (or anything else he roasts), use the code COFFEEINDEX for 20 percent off.
Okay... why is this variety developed in Kenya and specifically for Kenyan coffee farmers now gaining popularity with Central and South American producers?
"I would say beyond Kenya it's probably most well known that it’s planted in Costa Rica, largely because of Volcan Azul," Warren says.
Volcan Azul, in the West Valley region, produced an anaerobically fermented SL28 that took fourth place in the 2020 Cup of Excellence competition in Costa Rica, and this year they took second in the same competition with a washed example of the variety.
(Completely by coincidence, April released a natural processed SL28 from Volcan Azul this morning. The second place washed example is forthcoming.)
"I would say a lot of Costa Rican producers have followed suit, inspired by that [the 2020 win], and planted it," Warren says. "So I think we'll be seeing even more over the next year or two."
But why would a roaster choose to buy a Kenyan-tasting SL coffee grown in Central America instead of just a really solid SL coffee from Kenya?
"When you take that varietal that has such a distinct flavor and a flavor that would be associated with Kenya and you plant it in another country, and on a farm that has really good terroir where it’s tended to really carefully and intentionally, the potential for quality is just super high," Warren says.
In my mind, what it comes down to is this – Kenyan coffee tastes great, and layering in some subtle nuance brought on from another origin’s biodiversity is just fun. Simple as that.
Short and sweet for Volume 5. If you have an idea for a future newsletter, want to talk coffee, or have any feedback whatsoever — you can reply to this e-mail.
Next week: more coffee, a deal on NOMAD's insane upcoming releases (including a eugenioides!) and my totally (not) scientific study on resting coffee and what 200 roasters have to say about it.
Thanks for reading.
Jeff