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Dose: 20 g
Ratio: 1:17
Grind: Finer than Neutral
Brew Time: 2:55
TDS: 1.30
Extraction: 19.4%
Sensory Description:
When well dialed, Halcyon presents as a dried fruit and milk chocolate forward blend balancing gentle acidity with deep sweetness. The Latin America components bring rich, sugar browning notes providing the comforting base of this coffee, while the East African components brighten the coffee and offer acidity to balance the sweetness. The texture is creamy, similar to milk chocolate, with a medium-heavy body and long, pleasant aftertaste.
Dial Notes:
Halcyon is an easy coffee to dial and tastes excellent at a range of parameters. Optimal extraction should be deeply sweet with a long and pleasant aftertaste with gentle notes of dried fruit.
Under-extracted brews will present as sour and thin, like underripe fruit, lacking in the rich sugar-browning sweetness found in higher extraction percentages. If your brew is thin and sharp on the tongue, adjust the grind size finer.
Over-extracted brews will present as bitter and dull, similar to over-steeped black tea. Over-extraction masks the dried fruit notes and the coffee will have very little perceptible brightness, resulting in a flat, bitter dark chocolate profile. If your brew is bitter and dull, adjust the grind size coarser to balance the profile.
For a natural processed coffee, well-dialed cups of San Joaquin are quite chocolatey. And much like our other El Salvador offerings, this coffee is very sweet and has a nice creamy texture. You can expect a lot of candy bar flavors like milk chocolate, caramel, and vanilla. There’s also an underlying red fruit characteristic that adds complexity to the cup. Pay special attention to subtle notes of cherry and red apple when dialing. On the finish, you’ll find some cola, maple syrup, and pecan-like notes.
A well-dialed cup of Esperanza Kenya will present with a lot of fresh fruit-like sweetness similar to peach juice, clementines, and ripe strawberries. Compared to most naturally processed coffees, there is also a unique pop of citrus acidity that reminded me of lime. This fruit characteristic is paired with a lot of candy bar flavors like milk chocolate and nougat mousse, making the overall cup profile one of fruit and chocolate notes working very pleasantly together with a creamy, relatively heavy body. On the aftertaste, you should get some subtle florals and a lot of chocolate bar.
