{"id":287,"date":"2015-05-07T16:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T21:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=287"},"modified":"2015-08-07T12:41:04","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T17:41:04","slug":"review-victrola-kenya-nyeri-tambaya-peaberry-seattle-wa-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=287","title":{"rendered":"Review: Victrola Kenya Nyeri Tambaya Peaberry (Seattle, Washington)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently found out that a local coffee shop (Weekend Coffee<\/a>\u00a0in Dallas) carries Seattle-based Victrola Coffee Roasters so I popped over to check them out. On the day of my visit, they had two Victrola coffees available to take home: an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe and this Kenya. Since I\u00a0haven’t reviewed any Kenyan coffees yet, I decided to go that route.<\/p>\n

First off: what is a peaberry? When coffee grows, the coffee beans usually grow in pairs inside the coffee “cherry.” Imagine two halves of a peanut, both\u00a0with a rounded side and a flat side. That’s how coffee beans normally grow. However, about 5% of the time, instead of finding two coffee beans in the cherry, there is only one. This is a\u00a0peaberry. It is typically rounder and a little smaller than a normal coffee bean. Peaberries and normal beans cannot be roasted together, since the difference in size and shape will cause each to roast differently (much like two differently sized steaks will cook at different rates). Fans claim that the flavor is more concentrated in a peaberry vs. normal beans, and because the peaberries must be hand-harvested to separate them from the normal beans, they can command a premium in price.<\/p>\n

Peaberries on the left, regular coffee beans on the right.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0939\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"IMG_0940\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First impressions: The whole beans smelled like raisins, but also had a whiff of seaweed to them. To me they smelled most like nori sheets that people use to make sushi. I\u00a0love roasted seaweed, but in a coffee, I found this off-putting.<\/p>\n

V60: This cup was a little gamey. It was sweet, but the dominant flavor was quite earthy and weird. I didn’t really taste the raisins that I smelled earlier.<\/p>\n

AeroPress: Very thick and robust cup. The coffee smelled like mushrooms and steak. There is a bottle of wine that I have at home which is a rather funky Zinfandel, with notes of mushroom. This coffee reminded me of that. That Zinfandel pairs quite well with steak. Perhaps this coffee would be better paired with red meat? However, consuming this coffee without food first thing in the morning was pretty difficult for me.<\/p>\n

Chemex: Brighter and cleaner flavor and texture. There was a little bit more raisin\u00a0and less earth in this cup, but it was still pretty swampy tasting.<\/p>\n

French press: Same flavor as in the AeroPress + more grit.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong>: This coffee is like a really full-bodied, earthy, thick, funky Zinfandel or Cabernet Sauvignon. It definitely wasn’t lacking in personality! I will try other offerings from Victrola in the future – just not this one again.<\/p>\n

From the roaster: Raisins, red currants, spice<\/p>\n

Victrola Kenya Nyeri Tambaya Peaberry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently found out that a local coffee shop (Weekend Coffee\u00a0in Dallas) carries Seattle-based Victrola Coffee Roasters so I popped over to check them out. On the day of my visit, they had two Victrola coffees available to take home: an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe and this Kenya. Since I\u00a0haven’t reviewed any Kenyan coffees yet, I decided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"Find out about peaberries and why I am comparing this coffee to a funky Zinfandel.","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[44,48,46,43,45,47],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/IMG_0934-e1430540253159.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":605,"url":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=605","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":0},"title":"Review: Victrola Ethiopia Yirgacheffe “YIRGZ” (Seattle, Washington)","date":"June 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"My first experience with Victrola's beans was their Kenya Nyeri Tambaya Peaberry, which was NOT a favorite of mine, but I have heard enough good things about this roaster that I decided that I needed to pick up a different bag of theirs while in Seattle.\u00a0I am fond of washed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AeroPress"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coffeecantata.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/tn_IMG_1090.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5706,"url":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=5706","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":1},"title":"The Top 10 Most Prestigious Coffees in the World","date":"March 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Note from Margaret: This is a guest post from Zach Parkes, the brains behind the site Try New Coffee. All opinions expressed are his own and are not necessarily endorsed by me (though in reading this post, I noted that we do share a lot of the same opinions!). Thanks\u00a0for\u00a0writing\u00a0this\u00a0guest\u00a0post,\u00a0Zach!\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coffeecantata.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/4.-Kenya-AA.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1335,"url":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=1335","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":2},"title":"Review: Counter Culture Kenya Kamavindi (Durham, North Carolina)","date":"September 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In the 6 months thus far that this blog has been around, the coffee review with the most page views has been the Counter Culture Hologram Espresso. I figured it was high time I revisit Counter Culture's offerings, but this time I opted to try a single-origin versus one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Africa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coffeecantata.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tn_IMG_1394.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2240,"url":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=2240","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":3},"title":"Review: BeanFruit Coffee Co. Kenya Nyeri Chinga Peaberry (Jackson, Mississippi)","date":"August 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I had not heard of BeanFruit Coffee Company until very recently, but upon investigating, I discovered I was clearly behind the times, as they are a 2015 Good Food Award recipient, and they have had their coffees rated at 90+ points on both Coffee Review and The Espresso\u00a0Vein.\u00a0When people think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AeroPress"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coffeecantata.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/tn_FullSizeRender-3.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2446,"url":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=2446","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":4},"title":"The best of 2016","date":"December 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"It's that time again! I had fun recalling the last 12 months of coffee adventures, though I realized that my coffee consumption was down from this time last year. In 2015, I was generally aiming to write two bean reviews a week, but I found that schedule to be unsustainable;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Advice"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coffeecantata.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tn_FullSizeRender-4.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2242,"url":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/?p=2242","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":5},"title":"Review: BeanFruit Coffee Company Ethiopia Sidama Guji (Jackson, Mississippi)","date":"August 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the second of two bags of coffee I had the pleasure of receiving from the BeanFruit Coffee Company, based in the Jackson, Mississippi area. Their Kenya Nyeri Chinga Peaberry really knocked my socks off, and I was excited to see how this washed coffee from Ethiopia compared; I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AeroPress"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coffeecantata.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/tn_FullSizeRender-3-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5QIia-4D","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1134,"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/1134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffeecantata.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}