Catching Up on Coffee: Helsar de Zarcero

I was too busy for blogging these many weeks, but I was drinking coffee, and so my record here will have a gap. There was a roast from Verve that was quite tasty but is no longer available, and I made it through a couple of rough weeks with the delicious Peet's Holiday Blend, which my wife carried back from Los Angeles. She was spending some time there with her mother, who was ill but recovering, Then Nancy died unexpectedly from a stroke just before Thanksgiving. With that and all the other troubles this year, 2009 will not go down in our memory as a good year.

On the positive side, I returned to a more regular practice of zazen, sitting meditation, which has a calming effect though I do not appear to have gotten any closer to being a bodhisattva. In this age of sleep deprivation, a secret to staying awake on the cushion is strong coffee. Like this one. Coffee: Helsar de Zarcero, West Valley, Llano Bonito de Naranjo Micro-region, Costa Rica.

Roasted: Dec. 11 by Café Grumpy in Brooklyn.

Purchased Dec. 12 at Grumpy's Chelsea location at 224 W. 20th St., between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description "Medium, creamy body. Fresh blackberry aroma & mellow acidity. Finishing with honeycomb sweetness."

In the Cup As I mentioned earlier this fall, Grumpy has started roasting its own beans, a positive development. (The Chelsea shop is also offering classes, something a few of its competitors have been doing for a while).

This coffee is fresh, and tasty, and pretty much matches the creamy description on the bag, reprinted above. It's an excellent coffee, though lacking a certain something that keeps it off my "wow" list. I've tried it as a regular coffee and an espresso, brewing at home. Yesterday I filled a thermos full of nearly the last of it, and took it to my daughter's gymnastics class. It was deeply satisfying to pour a full mug and watch the kids. I am a little surprised to be running out already. Either I'm drinking more coffee than usual, or these bags are lighter than I realized. Luckily I also bought a bag of the Finca El Carmen from El Salvador, another variety the chain is roasting these days. I may not get around to blogging that one separately, but the bag promises nutty undertones, a sweet citrus aroma and "effervescent sweetness with dark chocolate finish."

According to Grumpy's informative site, the Helsar de Zarcero is 100 percent Caturra, aquapulped and sun-dried. The coffee comes from a "micromill" started by three families (now 10 are involved) in Costa Rica "with the goal of adding value and providing traceability to the high quality coffee grown on their land." The farm uses sustainable agriculture practices, including the use of organic fertlizers that are "fermented on-site by mixing coffee cherry pulp and molasses, along with mined zinc, boron, and other minerals. Micro-organisms are cultured from soil collected on nearby mountains and added to the natural fertilizer in order to provide disease protection to the coffee plants.”

I bet it's warm there right now.

Here in New York City, the snow is still fresh and white, after the snowpocalypse rolled through on Saturday. I'm at home sipping the last of this coffee, while my wife works quietly elsewhere in the apartment and our daughter is off sledding in Central Park with friends. I hope to get back to reading "Buddha's Brain," by Rick Hanson, or "Chronic City," by Jonathan Lethem, the two books I've sworn to finish before year's end. There's a hush over the city, except for the taxi whistles of a hotel doorman below, and a hush is over the city, and I'm pleased to steal this quiet moment to fire up the blog. I don't really know who reads this, apart from a few Twitter followers and friends, but let's hope together for a better 2010.

A Guatemalan Roast From Grumpy

Interesting things seem to be happening at one of my favorite New York coffee haunts, Café Grumpy. For one thing, the shop's official blog is looking flashier and busier. And Grumpy -- which turned me on to many of the best roasters in the country (Intelligentsia, Verve, Barismo, and Ritual) -- is now roasting selected coffees of its own at its Brooklyn location. I missed the Kenyan roast, but there still seemed to be an ample supply of this Finca Chichupac selection from Guatemala as well as a Finca Carmen from Panama El Salvador at the locally owned chain's Chelsea shop.

I'm happy to see all the local culinary coffee purveyors step up their games lately. Perhaps the arrival of Stumptown has something to do with that. Now if only a few more of them creep uptown into the 30s, 40s and 50s, a section of Manhattan that remains a Starbucks-dominated wasteland. Name: Finca Chichupac

Origin: Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala

Roasted Nov. 3 by Café Grumpy in Brooklyn.

Purchased Nov. 9 at Grumpy's Chelsea location at 224 W. 20th St., between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description "Candy apple aroma leads to a full-bodied cup. Granny smith apple brightness rounded out by caramelized brown sugar sweetness."

In the cup It stands to reason that a shop that has proven to be such a good judge of others' coffees would roast a fine one of its own. My only gripe is the lack of other documentation on the Grumpy site, apart from the short and sweet, "Autumn we love you." Indeed. But through the power of the Internet, I did find this brief interview on YouTube with Julián Alquejay of Finca Chichupac at last year's Cup of Excellence. The plantation is owned by 13 families in a region with a horrific history of government-directed mass murder and genocide of the Mayan population in the 1980s. Here is an article on the continuing legacy of that time and the civil war that ended in 1996.

Right now Grumpy is offering two of its own roasts, this Guatemalan and a second from Finca Carmen in Panama (presumably from the same farm as this Stumptown selection). I decided to go with Guatemala, and I'm glad I did.

I definitely caught the candy apple aroma, especially when drinking this as a regular coffee. It also makes a great espresso, and I thought I detected a bit of nut, not mentioned in the official tasting description above. The sweet finish definitely takes the edge off the fruity brightness. It's a great cup of joe.

That does not leave me any less conflicted, sampling these nuanced flavors, made from beans grown in an impoverished nation near former killing fields, as I sit in my comfortable apartment in the middle of the richest city in North America, far from the .bullets and butchers of men. Such thoughts certainly puts one's own petty troubles in perspective, at least.

An Opinion About Blue Batak

It is a little known fact that coffee improves your objectivity as a journalist. O.K., I'm kidding. I don't believe in "objectivity" and usually avoid the word. It sounds like an impossible God-like standard. Most people who use that term are setting up a straw man. I prefer terms like balance, neutrality, fairness. And conventional newspaper journalism can certainly reach conclusions, so long as they are supported by evidence, and qualified.

This just happens to be a topic on my mind and in my Twitter stream. The fairness/objectivity debate is in the air.

I work for a news organization that promises fairness and ethics. Like Buddhist enlightenment and perfection in general, they may not be attainable. The value to the reader comes from aiming for the worthy goal, without fear or favor, bias or prejudice. Even the best newspapers print corrections every day, but they still set accuracy as the standard. We don't give up because perfect accuracy is unattainable. A journalist who expresses political opinions risks abandoning the habit of keeping an open mind, risks losing the audience and access to sources that might give a more well-rounded picture of the debate, whatever it might be.

There's a risk that a decided mind is a closed one that overlooks facts and lacks empathy for all sides in a contested debate. Reserving judgment is a sound habit for a political journalist, and others who cover controversial topics.

For these reasons, I don't share my political opinions, when I have them. Most traditional journalists are the same. The work should speak for itself. A great reporter should be able to cover an atheists' convention or a Christian revival without drawing complaints of bias from any quarter and without revealing any beliefs about God. Who cares about one person's opinion, really? Opinions are plentiful and easy to come by. Reporting is hard work. It is a higher calling than argument and persuasion.

But we're here to talk about coffee. I have opinions about it. No contradiction there. I don't have a problem passing judgment on coffee, the quality of books and writing, TV shows, the usefulness of gadgets and other topics. For one thing, my day job does not involve reporting about or critiquing these things. They also fall in the realm of inconsequential opinions, right up there with "nice weather" and "you look great." So let's return to my coffee quest.

Name Blue Batak

Origin Mandheling, Sumatra

Roasted Sept. 1 by Verve Coffee Roasters of Santa Cruz.

Purchased Sept. 4 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description Chocolate and caramel biscuit tones, earthy graham-cracker graininess, citrus, dried pineapple and plum, tree bark, cinnamon stick, etc. (see below).

In the Cup The Verve Web site, alas, still seems to be a work in progress. All I know about Sumatra and Blue Batak are from this entry at Sweet Maria's:

We offer the top grade, specially-prepared Lintong coffees as Blue Batak in honor of the Toba Batak people. Blue Batak is a near-zero defect preparation, without the usual split beans, broken pieces and crud found in standard Sumatras. It is carefully density sorted and triple-hand-sorted. The dry fragrance has chocolate and caramel biscuit tones, but with a slight earthy and graham cracker graininess. Surprising fruits come forward in the wet aroma, even a momentary whiff of citrus, pineapple, dried plum, fig. It's got great rustic sweetness, aromatic tree bark, cinnamon stick, black tea, and mulling spice in the finish. The body is a bit lighter than the Onan Ganjang micro-lot we have as a sister lot, even though they come from areas that are very close to each other. It also has less of the herbal notes found in other Lintong coffees, which I think makes it a better choice for use in espresso.

So -- no crud -- got that? That's quite a laundry list of flavors. I can't speak to the tree bark, but there was a finish of black tea and certainly a sweetness. I liked this coffee quite a bit, as I often do when there's a hint of chocolate and caramel. I mostly drank it as an espresso. No crud. (Here's some more information about the Dutch term Mandehling)

Good coffee. Nice weather. You look great.

Coming Back Around to the Flor Azul

This direct-trade variety from Nicaragua was one of the earliest culinary coffees I wrote about on this blog, back in November 2008, when I first started to systematically evaluate the beans I was trying. Back then, I thought I knew a fair amount about coffee, but I really didn't know anything. My knowledge was limited to some basic presumptions I had about the geographic origins of various coffees. I didn't know much about individual growers or roasters. That level of detail was not readily available on the Web or on packaging until this third-wave era of coffee geekery with its focus on elevations, how beans are grown, dried and roasted, and the precise temperature settings on super-expensive coffee-making equipment. It used to be the specifics of coffee bean origins were known only to buyers, tasters and really obsessed fans. Maybe I'm turning into one of the latter, but I still have a lot to learn about the topic. I doubt I'll ever be an expert. I don't have the palate, or the patience, or the equipment. But when I saw that the Flor Azul was in season again, I was curious if my impressions of it had changed.

Name Flor Azul

Origin Las Brumas Cooperative in the Jinotega, Matagalapa region of Nicaragua.

Roasted Aug. 25 by Intelligentsia.

Purchased Sept. 4 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description Direct trade. Caturra, Catui grown at 1200-1550 meters. From the Web: "Flor Azul lays bare a flawless cup; clean and composed. Notes of melon fruit and apples express themselves affably in the forefront, hinting slightly toward citrus. The acidity plays a supporting role—adding lift to the mouthfeel as Swiss chocolate comes through in the finish."

In the cup The first time around, I think I mostly drank this as a regular coffee, drowned in soy milk, having found it too weird in general, and certainly too strong as espresso, my preferred way to take coffee. We were also having some water problems in our building last fall, and I had a cold. So many excuses. This time around, I tried it again as an espresso and as a regular cup of coffee.

It is certainly a challenging taste, lighter-bodied than I like and coming on strong first with flavors I guess are the melon and apple, but I've never been good at identifying those notes in a coffee. These seem to be notes that a lot of pro tasters value, but I still find it a bit weird in coffee. The reported chocolate finish was very slight to my taste.

So, this remains a complicated coffee for me, and while I recognize it as something good, and unusual, it's not something I can bring myself to drink every day. It's more of an interesting change of pace, but not something I will go out of my way to find again.

(Luckily, I have some other tasty selections I'm trying, roasted by Ritual and Verve, that I bought at Grumpy on the same day, and the excellent Montes de Oro from Stumptown.)

So, this was not an aha coffee. But that's OK. When you get down to the drinking, coffee is still a matter of personal taste. I'm learning that you can recognize something as good, of high quality, without loving it. I know there are a lot of people who enjoy Flor Azul, judging by some of the sell-side raves online, and it can be a way to jolt people with a new idea of what coffee can be, but this is not a selection I would want to drink with any regularity.

El Balsamo-Quetzaltepec, That's a Mouthful

A coffee-obsessed blogger bought three bags of beans at once, one sunny day in August. One of those bags is still nearly full. One is about half-full. And one is completely empty. This is the story of that one, which sits next to my computer, taunting me with a rich, thick aroma of beans that are no more. A couple of weeks ago, I asked what would happen if someone on the quest for a perfect shot of espresso coffee found what he was looking for? The prize-winning Black Cat from Bolivia roasted by Intelligentsia came close. And there have been a few others that I would put on that list. The sweet-tooth yellow Icatu comes to mind. When you can still remember a coffee you had six months ago, either it was good coffee, or you have an uncontrolled obsession. Maybe both.

What this coffee from El Salvador has in common with that one is the same roaster, Verve, in Santa Cruz, which has a maddeningly minimalist Web site. So finding information has been tricky. Name El Balsamo-Quetzaltepec

Origin: 100 percent Bourbon variety, Finca San Eduardo, El Salvador

Roasted: Aug. 11 by Verve Coffee Roasters, Santa Cruz, Ca.

Purchased: Aug. 16 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description One account: "Has a nectar, clean, creamy body, juicy, ripe, honeyed, lemon, complex acidity."

In the cup This is the second coffee from El Salvador that I've tried in recent months -- the other was Los Inmortales from Intelligentsia -- and I'm impressed.

It's tough to find much information online. A search yields brief mentions in retail listings or Spanish-only sites. [Update: See the comments for informative links from a reader.]

Grumpy doesn't have much information on its Web site, either, about this particular coffee. One can only hope that Verve's promised site upgrade will be coming soon, though I guess if I had to choose, I'd rather the roaster focus on making great coffee rather than blog design.

The description above, from a Scranton cafe's Facebook page (yes, people are selling coffee on Facebook!), sounds about right.

This is a creamy sweet coffee, like the yellow Icatu. I found myself drinking shot after shot of it, until the last bean was gone, today. The Barismo Koke suffered in the comparison (an unfair one, since it's going for a completely different taste experience). For more information about Salvadoran coffees and Bourbon varieties in particular, this page at Sweet Maria's has some good information (a few years old now).

Apparently, El Salvador used to have a poor reputation compared to the rest of Central and Latin America, but I'm inclined to try more coffees from there, especially from a a quality roaster like Verve or Intelligentsia. And I'll keep an eye out for this grower, Finca San Eduardo.

Late Night, With Wondo Harfusa

These days, I seem to be on a musical nostalgia tour. A couple of weeks ago, it was The Dead. Then last night, my wife and I found ourselves in the crowd for They MIght Be Giants at Le Poisson Rouge, on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. The crowd of people in button-downed shirts and khaki was enthusiastic. But it did not have the same energy we recalled from the late 1990s, when the band could fill the Bowery Ballroom, and nerdy fans sat in circles in the line outside singing angst-ridden lyrics they knew by heart. That was long before the band transformed itself a Grammy-winning act for children known for TV and movie theme songs. Anyway, the last thing I did before leaving the apartment was to pull another shot of this coffee, from the Yerga Cheffe region of Ethiopia. It kept me bouncing. Name: Wondo Harfusa

Origin: Yerga Cheffe, Ethiopia.

Roasted: May 18 by Verve Coffee Roasters, Santa Cruz, Ca.

Purchased: May 25 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description: One account: "begins with a hibiscus aroma followed by ripe red fruit flavors of raspberry, red currant and cherry finishing with notes of black tea."

In the cup: In this ongoing inquiry, I've been intrigued by the coffees from this region (notably Wondo Worko). And I know I'm in for a treat whenever I see the Verve Roasters bag at Grumpy.

I tend to be suspicious of "fruit flavors" in coffee descriptions, but these tend to be just traces. In most cases, the underlying flavor is coffee, a category unto itself. That said, I personally think fruit and flower notes can sometimes overpower a coffee, making for a tasting experience that is unpleasant. I can happily report that is not the case with Wondo Harfusa. You can definitely find the ripe cherry and raspberry under the coffee, but it works with the whole. More and more I find I enjoy tasting for these secondary flavors more than I ever expected when I started learning about culinary coffee. Before long, this will probably turn me into the worst sort of coffee snob.

But for now, I'm enjoying my third shot of espresso of the morning and early afternoon, having been up a little too late (after the opener by Mixel Pixel and the somewhat short TMBG set, we headed over to another place in the Village, Cafe Vivaldi, for some more music, and drinks). I thought about finding a way to segue back to the show, maybe with some coffee-related lyrics. Something about getting older, and holding onto the moment, and all that. (I didn't even mention the helicopters overhead and the motorcade tying up traffic. Barack and Michelle Obama were also having a date that started with dinner in the neighborhood.)

For now I'm content to just let the coffee do its job: Wake me up.

From the Aptly Named Wondo Worka

Yes, I'm coffee-blogging again. After ambiguously adequate experiences with single-source beans from Starbucks and Joe the Art of Coffee, I high-tailed it back to my regular source of beans this week.

I'm sorry to report that the Costa Rican coffee from Starbucks remained bitter until the bitter end. I finally mixed it up with the last of the Indian Mysore, which made them both somewhat passable, because I hate to waste beans. But it was a chore. A change was in order. Name: Wondo Worka Co-Op

Origin: Yerga Cheffe or Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia. Nobody can quite agree on the spelling, apparently.

Roasted: Jan. 27 by Verve Coffee Roasters, Santa Cruz, Ca.

Purchased: Feb. 2 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description: Nothing on the bag but the shop's menu says, "Notes of honey and apricot fill this clean sweet cup."

The Pour: It was a pleasure to try this bean as regular pressed coffee at Café Grumpy twice this week after dropping my daughter off at school, and as espresso shots this weekend. (I had a cold in the latter part of the week that I am still trying to shake, so that may interfere with my impressions.)

When I bought the beans, I ordered a 12-ounce cup of the same and was quite satisfied. I had it again on a second visit two days later. I was still drinking the other stuff at home, and the contrast was startling. This was so much better.

It's hard to find much online about the Wondo Worka cooperative. It is reportedly grown in the Sidamo province of the southern Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia, like this "floral shining citrus" bean that I tried in this ongoing coffee-blogging quest.

In December, Ken David's Coffee Review, a leading buying guide, rated this coffee highly, saying:

Intense, bright aroma: tart coffee cherry, honey, a hint of fir, flowers. In the cup tartly sweet acidity, honeyish mouthfeel and flavor, with molasses, pipe tobacco and deep, rose-like floral notes. Very sweet, fruit-saturated, perfectly clean finish... A dramatically light roast liberates both acidity and sweetness and allows an unusual honey, molasses and rose-like floral character full expression.

A different roaster described the flavor this way: "A beautiful harmony of sweet citrus and lingering florals — lime, meyer lemon lavender cake, jasmine, and a hint of ripe honeydew."

And here is one that offers some "history":

In the lore of the bean, coffee was first discovered by an Ethiopian shepherd who noticed his goats going nuts after eating these particular cherries. So he began eating them to stay awake on long nights guarding his flock: it worked and the rest is history. You can still taste those wild nights in every cup of Yergacheffe: not too heavy or spicey and with that touch of wilderness, it is a satisfying full-bodied cup. Every coffee drinker should try the original.

I must say, these descriptions still crack me up a little, though I know what they're trying to convey. In a cup made on a Clover at the shop, I definitely found the coffee sweet with a touch of citrus, not overpowering as with the last bean I tried from this region. (And this marks the second time I've been pleased with a Verve roast.)

As an espresso, the flavor seemed more honey and molasses at first. By the third shot over the course of this morning, my head cleared -- a wonder worker from Wondo Worka? By then, I was picking up the lemon flavor, especially at the finish.

And after the unpleasant bitter experience of the Starbucks Bella Vista, it was a welcome change of pace. I'm not ready to declare an end to the quest, but this is fine coffee.

Several Shots of Finca Santa Isabel's Best

This felt like a long week. A lot of meetings. My daughter had her first round of standardized testing at school. Two reporters I rely on the most at work took some days off. Then a plane ditched in the Hudson. We blogged, twittered, stayed up late. It was the rare big story with a happy ending. Way back on Sunday I had bought this bag of beans and, even before the crash landing, I was making myself three fast espresso shots with the Jura to jolt myself awake each morning before rushing out the door. That did not allow much time for contemplation of how these beans compared to the others I've sampled and written about. Name: Finca Santa Isabel (Rainforest Alliance). Origin: Mountaintop plantation by the above name in Santa Rosa, Guatemala. Roasted: Jan. 6 by Verve Coffee Roasters, Santa Cruz, Calif. Purchased: Jan. 10 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Description: None on the plain brown bag. But this Cup of Excellence entry described a related batch as solid, well-balanced, with good acidity, clean and sweet. The Pour: This morning, with a small amount of the bag left, I took the time to savor a shot for the first time this week. A nice layer of crema on top. My impressions from the week are confirmed: a full-bodied, tasty shot. No fruity flavors. Not overpowering. No bite or unpleasant aftertaste. Pleasant. Probably what most people would think of when you say coffee. It reminds me of the Poker Face Espresso, a blend that also had some Guatemalan beans, as well as the serviceable Heartbreaker.

According to this account, the beans -- principally Canturra and Catuai, both from the Arabica coffee family -- are grown in volcanic soil in the ideal climate, then hand-sorted a couple of times in a water process before being sun-dried on special patios. Mmmm, sounds crafty. Then there's the "innovative two-step fermentation, which results in a smoother, cleaner cup." I don't know that I buy into much coffee hype, but they do seem to be doing something right. I'm still looking for something a little richer and smoother, in my quest for an ideal cup. I also wonder if the longer delay from the roasting to my cup has had any effect.

I'm probably going to miss it when I turn to the Rwandan beans that I also bought last Sunday. That bag remains sealed in a cool place, but the bag promises a "cider currant" flavor. What was I thinking? I'll stick with the Finca Santa Rosa today and try that tomorrow.