It’s 7:30 AM. The little boy comes…
He is my weekend wake up alarm. And remotely turning on the cartoons on the TV in the living toom is my snooze button. It takes a while until he comes back to want something different, or until his big brother wakes up too. That’s the moment when I have to wake up for sure! Today it was like 7:45 and I was happy to have about an hour and a half more for sleeping.
After a quick routine at the bathroom, it is time for coffee. And because my wife takes advantage of her husband being home, she sleeps until she can and I enjoy an espresso shot alone. The second coffee usually comes when she wakes up and it is a double dose, shared with the soulmate.
And what about the mysterious bag of beans? Let’s see it!
Pitch black, no label, not a single word on it. Hopefully this won’t be an indicator about the roast level of the coffee inside… 😁
And, thankfully… they are not that black. Actually they look like a medium roast, one that would fit better an espresso shot, rather than filter coffee.
But where do these beans actually come from?
On my last visit in the Specialty Place 23 coffee shop the owner told me and my friend that he will give us a sample espresso, seeking our opinion on it. He did not gave us any guidelines about the tastes we were gonna find in there. He only gave us silence, waiting for our feedback.
The coffee was on the sour side at the beginning, and it had some citrus flavors blended in the body. I caught some grapefruit like bitterness in my cup. My friend said that the coffee was a bit too bitter for him, but he would probably be OK if someone sells this product at a specialty coffee shop.
In my opinion the coffee was quite pleasurable and although it had a bitter aftertaste I was happy with it.
The coffee originated from Honduras. And somehow the green beans found their way to a Bulgarian coffee enthusiast who recently bought a small size roasting machine. One that costs about $10000 or so, and this guy tries to achieve a good quality product, which he eventually will start selling.
Now he roasts coffee and sends sample to different friends in Bulgaria, seeking feedback and honest opinion of the coffee lovers.
Misho, the coffee place owner, told us that he’s gonna give me and mu friends 100 grams of the coffee to experiment at home, he had about 1 kg of these beans and he had no idea what else to do with this coffee. I never refuse presents, eapecially when they are coffee presents!
And here I am, in the Saturday morning, brewing the mysterious coffee from Honduras.
12 grams in, and i seek about 40 ml in the cup. Yummy!
Experiments with this coffee at home showed that I cannot extract the coffee that well, as Misho does on the professional espresso machine, but my Delonghi worked quite well too. Only this bitterness feels a bit more intense. Maybe it’s worth investing $1300 in a basic E63 group head espresso machine? Just kidding… I’m not that rich for now and this expense would not be that justified.
It is raining again… starts to be a bit annoying. Maybe the weather in Bulgaria has switched with that in the UK?
And when I enjoy my shot… guess what? Someone wakes up. This was a bit unexpected, because onlu half an hour has passed from the time I got up.
Time to brew a coffee for my wife too. I do this while she does her morning routine and as soon as she is ready, her coffee is ready as well. A cup of Brazil Samambaia is what she ordered. These beans are well known in the Dabov lovers and they now come from a new crop.
A fine Japanese porcelain cup meets with the delightful liquid. It’s time for some saturday family morning. I guess we will be stuck at home all day long, because the weather forecast suggests only rain and nothing more. Yuck…
Thats it… I’m done with my weekly coffee post. Wish you a happy weekend with a lot of positive vibes!
See you soon! Bye!
I think your wife has the right idea. If sleeping in on the weekend is possible, why not?
I'm not keen on a sour taste for coffee at all and would be disappointed if I bought a pack from a speciality coffee roaster and got home and discovered that.
That brew looks amazing!
Haha! The weather here has been holding up nicely. I have been spending much time outdoors and I'm feeling a bit drained from the heat today. I still have a post that I'm working on from my dayout yesterday, though.
Have a lovely weekend:)
Sour taste has different dimensions IMO… lime or grapefruit sourness can be quite delightful, but some coffee can host quite unpleasant sourness. I’m a huge fan of the first one, definitely! The sour taste gives me a very refreshing vibe.
One of my fav Bulgarian bands had a concert in UK yesterday and as I saw from their stories, the weather was quite hot and unusual for English standards.
Tasting samples of unfamiliar coffee on a routine visit to a coffee shop sounds like a lot of fun, an anecdote out of the ordinary.
I think it's good that you were able to take some home and compare the result in a home coffee machine, in the end if they are going to market a coffee, they should look at many aspects, even if they are limited to just supplying coffee shops.
Keep enjoying that family weekend!