A fresh round of new crop coffees are beginning to land at the Barriques Roastery. Starting this week, every arrival of beans until early July brings a fresh harvest from the coffee countries of the Northern Hemisphere. The first 3 months of each regional coffee shows beans at their brightest and zestiest, bursting with extra flavor (and maybe a bit more caffeine, too). If you peak in the window at the Roasters at Park St. working their magic, this is why they have such a big smile on their faces.
So how big a deal is this? You will notice the difference, because new crop coffees are bright, with a youthful bounce and have a vivid contrast to coffees from the latter half of the season. It’s very similar to how wines age in the bottle. The bright fruit and punchy tannins of young wine morphs over years into wines with richer body, silky mouthfeel and darker flavor. Coffee’s seasonal flavor cycle does the same; Heirloom Arabica beans just do it in fast- forward, over a single crop year.
Our first new crop lots arrive this week, so reset your palate to celebration mode! Here are a couple of the coffees that will be arriving first:
Colombia ‘Cordillera Central’
Here’s the fresh harvest of one of the best coffees we roasted last summer just as we were getting our roaster up and going. It has become a real favorite of our customers and the coffeeheads on our staff! These Heirloom Arabicas are sustainably grown by Grupo Café Exotico de Altura de Giraldo, a cooperative of 120 families in Antioquia region. Their farms cover about 300 acres of rich volcanic ash at over 7000 feet, Colombia’s highest growing altitude.
It’s a real coffee lover’s cup: sweet, rich cocoa and plum flavor, voluptuous aroma, rich, heavy body, and best of all the great Colombian signature – a silky, buttery texture and tangy walnut oil finish.
Guatemala Huehuetenango
First newcrop delivery of our excellent Huehuetenango coffee, the region of high, windswept plains surrounded by the highest mountains in Guatemala featuring rugged peaks of 12,000 feet and more. Dry, hot winds from Mexico’s southern plains protect coffee plants from frost, creating a subtropical Alpine microclimate that’s ideal for native heirloom Arabica coffees. Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai varieties grow at high altitudes of 5,000 to 7,500 ft., in a cool, humid environment that facilitates lush, beautiful plants with uniform creamy-white flowering and deep-red cherries. They yield very dense, blue-green beans with winy acidity and excellent cup quality.
‘Huehues’ are a bright and very winy coffee with a fine, crisp aroma. The cup is medium-full bodied with lots of jammy fruit flavor, a silky, creamy mouthfeel and Huehuetenango’s classic, malty sweet chocolate note.
