For anyone in the Far North Dallas area who is interested in the current trend of very light-roasted coffee, often with co-fermentation and experimental processing, I recommend that you check out Filtered Coffee in McKinney for their expertly curated bean selection. They first got on my radar when I discovered that they started to carry beans from one of my favorite local roasters (really, one of my favorite roasters, full stop), Native Coffee Company. I stopped in to the shop intending to buy a bag or two of Native, but I was starstruck by the variety of roasters they had featured, including roasters from Europe! Their selection rotates, but on my first visit, they were featuring Sey, DAK, Harp and Bowl, Ilse, Nomad, Luz, and Native, in addition to this single-origin coffee from La Cabra. Pretty stunning lineup!
La Cabra Coffee was established in Aarhaus, Denmark in 2012, and you can read more about their history here. They have roastery locations in Denmark, Oman, Bangkok, and New York.
Whole bean: With the current trend in speciality coffee leaning light to ultra-light, the beans in whole form offer very little aroma. Coffee beans that are roasted medium and darker tends to degas pretty quickly (filling up the coffee bags with that wonderful aroma you can smell through the one-way valve as you squeeze the bag), but lighter roasted coffee degasses much more slowly, and we won’t really smell as much when the coffee is opened. This is why the current advice seems to be to wait anywhere from 3-6 weeks (or even longer!) to open a freshly roasted coffee, if it’s from one of these companies that roasts very lightly. Things will take more time to reach their full flavor.
French press: Lovely cup. The coffee is very sweet and juicy, with a little bit of floral character. Hard to pinpoint exact flavors – it sort of whispers across the palate.
Hario V60: Very similar experience to the French press cup.
Chemex: Brown sugar, rainier cherry, and raspberry with a bit of rose. Probably the most flavorful cup of this tasting – elegant and satisfying to drink.
Clever Dripper: For some reason, the drawdown took extraordinarily long (total brew time was 7 minutes!). This could have been a grinder calibration issue (I recently replaced my burrs), a filter issue (I ran out of my original Clever filters and bought some Melitta #4s, which fit the brewer but are thicker), or just plain old user error, but this was the only disappointing cup of the bunch. It tasted like white toast. Shocking considering the fruity sweetness of the other cups! I’m starting to get disenchanted with the Clever.
Summary: This Costa Rican coffee from La Cabra produced 3 stunning cups and 1 mid one, but I think that was likely my own fault. The flavors are delicate, complex, and delicious, and I would happily buy more coffee from this brand (but probably steer clear of trying to make it work in a Clever Dripper).
From the roaster: intense sweetness, delicate floral aromatics
I took so long to write up this review that this particular coffee is no longer available for sale through La Cabra’s online store, but here is a link to their current offerings:
La Cabra USA Coffee Online Store
Review conducted 38-39 days post-roast.