Coffee roasting: Costa Rica Don Mayo

"Costa Rica Don Mayo"? Wasn't he a character in Scarface?

The full name on the label of the beans I roasted tonight is Costa Rica Don Mayo "La Ponderosa" Bourbon.

Holy Moly what a name.

If I roasted it right the label also says I should end up with coffee that has a "toasted granola aroma, boysenberry syrup sweetness, hazelnut, malt syrup."

Now don't think this is flavored coffee made to taste like pancake syrup. Remember the comedy routine Dennis Leary did about that?

Here is the full description of these roasted coffee beans.

Notes: La Ponderosa is a special super-high elevation coffee from Tarrazu, processed expertly at the Don Mayo Micro-Mill by the Bonilla Family.

I met the senior, Hector in Costa Rica last year, and again when they visited in September withe the Costa Rica Micromiller group. He brought his son Pablo, who is a big part of the team at Don Mayo. And I must admit, they have the coolest logo ever (a coffee bean head with the traditional Tico coffe workers hat ... something of a Gilligan type thing.)

And I am so happy with how this lot of coffee arrived, so sweet, so balanced; it's a coffee I could drink all day long. The dry fragrance has berry fruit to it, toasted granola, and dark corn syrup sweetness. Adding the hot water, the wet aromatics sweeten exponentially, the boysenberry syrup sweetness fully fleshed out, spicey accents of clove and cinnamon. The cup needs some time to cool down for the flavors to really open up.

It strikes me as extremely balanced in the body initially, and amber malt in it's sweetness. The berry fruit flavors bgean to peek out, this time as a blackberry note. The roast flavors are more nut-based in tonality, between a very mild roasted peanut and hazelnut. And more than anything, the cup is sweet. I keep thinking of amber malt syrup, hence the fact that maltose must be present in this coffee. The degree to which you convert those sugars in roasting will determine a lot of your flavor here.

My favorite stradled the divide between City+ and Full City. This dense, Bourbon cultivar is a bit tough to read, in terms of degree-of-roast. Erring on the lighter side will yield better results.

That might all sound silly. I mean all coffee tastes like well "coffee" right? As Dennis Leary said "coffee flavored coffee." Well that's the deal. It doesn't. It changes according to the beans, the soil, the weather, the processing. The folks at Sweet Marias visit the farms, pick out the green beans. Buy a bunch, roast and make coffee. They tell you how dark to roast it, and what it tastes like.

Just read this on the current crop of Costa Rican coffee they sell.

I buy green coffee beans and roast them at home. These beans can come from all over the wold and you end up with a wide variety of taste. Every Sunday I roast up 1 pound. That lasts a week and most of the time it is something different than the week before. I do have some favorites, but more often than not I mix it up. My all time favorite? Monsooned Malabar "Elephant" coffee beans from India.

Monsooned coffees are stored in special warehouses until the Monsoon season comes around. The sides of the structure are opened and moist monsoon winds circulate around the coffee making it swell in size and take on a mellowed but aggressive, musty flavor.

The monsooning process is labor-intensive: coffee is spread on the floor of the special monsooning warehouse, raked and turned around by hand to enable the seeds to soak in moisture of the humid winds. The monsooning process takes around 12 to 16 months of duration, where in the beans swell to twice their original size and turn into pale golden color.

Then there are additional hand-sortings to remove any coffee that did not expand properly, and the coffee is prepared for export.

All that hard work ends up with an amazing cup of coffee in your hand after you roast the beans. There are none of these beans for sale right now. Hopefully these monsooned beans will be in soon.

You can do it too. You need a good hood fan because things can get pretty smokey. Other than that you can buy a fancy roaster or a popcorn popper. Then get some beans from a place like Sweet Maria's and give it a try.

You will not only have fresh coffee and save money, but you can also learn abut the places and the people that put in all the work to get you a cup of coffee. That cup of joe you slam down is the end result of a farmer somewhere in the world that puts in lots and lots of work in getting things just right for you to drink it asap while rushing out the door.

Give it a try, do some home roasting. Read up on the farms that supply the fresh beans. Appreciate their effort. Explore the variety of the beans. Slow down and taste the coffee. Never take it for granted. Oh and you'll save some money as well.