Today I continued to work on the new coffees.
The dark Sulawesi Toraja with drip preparation continues to be fantastic. It definitely tastes like a French Roast, but there are neat spice notes as well. Sulawesi Toraja is now available in pound and half pound packages, as well as for wholesale customers.
Fair Trade Certified Timor Maubesse was easy to decide on in the cupping. One sample was richer, more flavorful, and better tasting than he others, and it tasted as I think good coffee from East Timor ought to taste. Drip preparation resulted in a brew with really explosive flavor. This is a fantastic coffee. I will probably use this in the brewing demonstration on Saturday.
A few samples of Fair Trade Certified Honduras in a very narrow range were delicious.
There was a small fight over my second attempt at the Peruvian. I felt that this batch eliminated the astringent note of the first while maintaining the rest of the flavor profile, which was very good. While this was my intent, Robin did not care for it. I roasted another cupping batch with a tighter sample range and a different airflow pattern. This provided samples that were not as sweet, but did provide more body and nice butter notes in the flavor. Hopefully this will pass the drip test.
The Ethiopian that cupped with such delicate sweetness turned sour in a dripolator. Fortunately, there was another sample that was very good. I hadn't gone with it because of certain things in the flavor that I did not like, but all of them were things that I know how to eliminate by making certain manipulations to the roasting process. This other batch turned out very good and is now available.
Cupping the new lot of Rwanda A was interesting. Two well separated samples were delicious. Between them was an incredibly sweet (and also incredibly bad) sample and some samples that can only be described as not unpleasant.