Almost great
I am not a Q grader, I am a coffee drinker and lover. After spending a week tasting a number of roast profiles of the Coffee we have sourced via Café Imports direct from the Coatepec, Mexican community we have identified a profile we like. And I believe it is a good and almost great coffee.
COE perhaps
I know the Cup of Excellence (COE) rating is per country, to make it more subjective, but having tasted a few great coffees this year, although the Coatepec coffees won COE this year we prefer the microlot coffees we have sourced from Colombia, like Los Idolos. That said the Coatepec is very drinkable, especially without the addition of milk. Would we say it deserved the COE tag, well we cannot comment since we did not taste the other coffees from Mexico. But we suspect this is the kind of coffee that may have stood out, regardless of the selected roast profile.
Roast Selected
Although the cupping notes identified white grape, we actually found we preferred the roast that did not expose this flavour. Instead we found that accelerating the roast once we moved to full air through the roasting barrel, then waiting for first crack to complete, and dropping the coffee as we suspected second crack was a hint in the air, then listening to second crack initiating in the cooling bin produces the most drinkable coffee. This seems to expose more of the toffee and caramels that we enjoy in this coffee.
We only have 8 bags of the coffee, so I suspect it will sell well, especially since it is below the R240.00 / kg mark. At our next cupping open day we will have this as a coffee to cup.
You can order the Coatepec here.
