Sept. 21, 2010
We offered a set of three coffees from El SalvadorEl Salvador coffee had an undeservingly poor reputation for years, marred mostly by the inability to deliver coffee of high quality in an unstable political climate. Unfortunately, agriculture... ...more – Manzano EstateA "coffee estate" is used to imply a farm that has its own processing facility, a wet-mill. In Spanish this is called an Hacienda. A Finca (farm) does... ...more some time ago, and it was a great educational experience I think. The set contained a single lot of the same coffee processed three different ways so you could taste what difference processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural... ...more makes. Here are some notes from the review, “CuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... ...more these coffees is a exciting intellectual experience. There is a pronounced difference in the cup, but at the same time a very logical progression of the development of certain flavors and characteristics which show how similar the coffees are as well. The coffee itself is sweet and bright, not a lot of delicate floralFloral notes in coffee exemplify the connection between taste and smell. Describing the taste of a specific flower is near impossible...we always default to “it tastes like it... ...more notes, but the transformation is clear. One interesting thing was that my scores increased with the amount of coffee cherryOriginally coffee literature referred to the fruit of the tree as a "berry" but in time it became a cherry. It is of course neither. Nor is the... ...more that was left on the parchmentGreen coffee still in its outer shell, before dry-milling, is called Parchment coffee (pergamino). In the wet process, coffee is peeled, fermented, washed and then ready for drying... ...more; meaning, in my opinion the natural was the best of the three, with the pulp naturalPulp natural is a hybrid method of processing coffee to transform it from the tree fruit to a green bean, ready for export. Specifically, it involves the removal... ...more being second, and the washed lacked the complexity and dimensions offered in the two other processes. The score on the spider graph reflects the full natural process, but I have individual scores for each process at the end of their respective cupping notes. Generally where the scoring differed was in the body-mouthfeel and the depth of flavor categories.”
