Dark Roast Archives - Lily & Willy's Coffee Co.

Colombia – Cauca

brett — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 18:28:30 +0000

This “Veredas Vecinas” blend is made up of coffees from neighboring villages in Inzá, Cauca. While the regions are hardly neighboring each other, the veredas (“villages”) where they were pulled from are. The bulk of the coffee is from a buying operation in San Antonio, within the Southwestern Colombian region of Inzá de Cauca. As you make the drive from La Plata to Inzá, you follow the Rio Páez, and an eventual crossing over a suspension bridge lands you on the road to the villages where we buy coffee. Like much of Colombia, Cauca is home to very high altitude farms, many above the 2000 meter mark. The coffees that make up this lot were harvested from an altitude range of about 1500 to 2000 meters. This is a wet-processed coffee, most farmers using old style depulpers that are powered by hand-crank or small motors, then fermenting and washing the coffee in the same tank, and finally drying the coffee in covered drying rooms called “parabolicos”.

The dry fragrance has balanced sweetness and low tones, with accents of unrefined sugars, molasses, brown bread, and bittersweet cocoa in the more developed roasts. The wet crust has a very attractive smell of caramel and malt syrup, with hints of toasted nut, and peach pie filling. Veredas Vecinas delivers deep low tones with flavor profile of bittersweet chocolate torte, Dutch drinking cocoa, and a note of dried date. This coffee is big-bodied no matter roast level, with pleasing, rounded mouthfeel that lends to a long aftertaste. For those looking for a Colombian espresso option, expect syrupy chocolate with a flash of dried fruit, viscous mouthfeel and lasting bittersweet finish.

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Decaf Blend

Editor — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 21:38:24 +0000

This decaf coffee was processed by Swiss Water Process in Vancouver BC, whose patented process uses only water to remove 99.9% of the caffeine content and leaving much of the volatile compounds intact. We’re calling it “Boda Boda” blend, as a way of paying tribute to the amazing “boda boda” motorcycle taxis common to East Africa. It’s amazing to see just how many passengers these drivers will cram on two wheels, regularly shuttling 3, 4…even 5 people around bustling cities and on dusty roads! Have cargo to move too? No problem! Boda boda drivers don’t seem to have any qualms defying the laws of physics! The coffees that went into this blend are from stations Mutovu and Karambi in Nyamasheke, Rwanda, and a small amount of dry process coffee from Gakenke site in Kayanza, Burundi.

This East African decaf blend of Burundi and Rwanda coffees yields well-balanced sweetness, subtle top note hints, and moderate bittersweet tones that all come together to make quite an appealing decaf. Grinding a light roast, the fragrance releases notes of sugar in the raw with a baking spice hint, vanilla wafer cookies, and a slight honey note. I found the wet aroma to be simple, sweet, and convincingly “non-decaf” in character. The brew showed a nice balance between sweetness and acidity, nothing “over the top” in terms of flavors, and reminded me how East African coffees can be great replacements for coffees of Central America. City+ roasts bring pleasantly sweet accents to the brew, like light brown sugar, and sucanat, contrasted by and subtle hints of citrus, and green apple. More developed roasts improve on roast tones, like dark chocolate, and cinnamon-laced hot cocoa.

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Teddy’s Blend

Editor — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 21:26:39 +0000

Rotating seasonal blend. Washed Guatemala and a natural Rwanada. The micro region of Peña Blanca is located in the sub-municipality of La Libertad, Huehuetenango. This coffee comes to us through a joint-effort of two local micro-mill owners who are perform farmer outreach on our behalf finding and delivering many, many samples to us of coffees from family members and neighbors alike all over the Huehuetenango region. This particular microlot comes from a single farmer, Flavio Martinez, whose farm is located in Peña Blanca. The coffee is a mix of Bourbon, Catuai, Caturra and Typica and is grown right around 1700 meters above sea level. The Nyakabingo green coffee washing station is named after the hill where it resides. It’s located in Rwanda’s Nyamasheke district at an altitude of 1850 meters above sea level, though farms reach up much higher toward 2000.

While unrefined sugars and bittersweetness are the bolded print here, this coffee shows nuanced top notes and fairly bright acidity. The smells touch on clean raw sugars, as well as an accent of rustic red fruits, and dark honey through inky, bittersweet roast tone. The aroma lets off a wonderful scent of brown sugar and apple when adding the hot water, an array of raw sugar winding their way through the steam. The coffee cools to bracing acidity that is very malic (apple/pear), and the aftertaste had a hint of spiced apple sauce. Overall this blend produces a cup filled with flavors that come together like berry-infused dark chocolate. This will make an excellent espresso too, and brings a blueberry note to sipid bittersweet flavors, and thick, syrupy mouthfeel.

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