Today is day 16 of the Kaffebox Advent Calendar.
Today we're brewing Kieni, which the producer is Kien Wet Mill, hence the name. It's a Kenyan SL28, SL34, and Ruru 11, which are pretty standard varieties. December 2024 harvest, and quite high for a Kenyan at 1950 meters above sea level. This was roasted by the Coffee Collective, and has flavor notes of juicy and fruity, notes of blackberry and rhubarb. This is very up my alley, especially since I'm on a Kenya kick, but it also has flavor notes that I'm really into. It was 16 grams of coffee to 250 grams of water, 94C, 700 to 950 grind size, so we did 20 clicks on the Q air, and they do one long pour, a bloom and a long pour, but I never get good results with that.
Brew 1
So I did my standard two pour, bloom plus two pour recipe, with a total brew time of three minutes, due to the swirl at the end. I might re-brew it without the swirl, and it will finish about 230, 240, but let's see how this tastes. The initial aroma is quite Kenya-y. It's fruity, but with that, like, slightly earthy, tomato-ey Kenya undertones. Not particularly aromatic, but not particularly not aromatic. Currently about a five on aroma.
The initial taste of this coffee definitely tastes a bit over-extracted. I'm wondering if I should go to 22 or 24 clicks. It's quite juicy, but we're not getting really any acidity, and it's quite bitter for what it is. So we might brew this again before doing a final rating. As this coffee cools, it's slightly more juicy and fruity, and has a bit more acidity, but it still has bitter undertones. There's no specific fruit notes that stand out. It's kind of just a mix. So I think I'm going to brew it again, and then give a rating, because I am not happy how this cup has come out.
Brew 2
Okay, we brewed the coffee again at 24 clicks now. Did the same two-pour recipe at 1 to 15.6. I watched Mateo's video, and he said that it is probably an easily extracting coffee. So I tried going down, and now the coffee looks way less extracted. It doesn't look super strong at the moment in the cup. So we're going to taste it and see if we get better tasting notes out of this now. I definitely prefer this cup over the original cup, though now it's a tad under-extract, I think. So we went too far the other way. I think I'm going to go ahead and rate it either way, because I don't know if I'm going to get a third full brew out of it. But if I do, I'll update this.
In terms of a aroma it gets a 5, and honestly, everything else is just a straight-up 7. It's like an above-average Kenyan, but it isn't blowing me away. It's definitely a fruit forward. Well balanced. But nothing insane on this cup. I am thinking that if I do re-brew it, this might be a fantastic coffee. So maybe I'll try to still do a third brew of it and see how that goes.
Brew 3 Soup
I didn't end up making coffee last night, so it's a new day, and I decided to make soup out of this. I did 5.2 on the Sd40. We did 16 grams in and 60 grams out in 19 seconds, at about 5 bars to start and then ramped out to 3 bars of pressure most of the way through, and we shall see how it tastes. I forgot to mention that I am brewing this on a Flair Pro 2 with a preheat of 100 degrees Celsius water, and then what ended up in the brew chamber was about 97 degrees Celsius. And the cup that came out was very, very hot, I would guess, in the 93-ish Celsius range. But it's hard to know exactly with the Flair. The aroma on this is much better than yesterday, way, way fruitier, less tomato-y, and probably an 8 out of 10 on the aroma, but that's also due to the concentration. We never really claimed that. So the initial taste of this, as there's only about three gulps in a soup, so the initial taste is exactly as the tasting profile, which would be berry forward and then that rhubarb bitterness acidity in the background. I still am sticking to my rating from yesterday. I don't think it has changed. I think it's basically 7 throughout. It's quite juicy with nice acidity, but I really expected more of this coffee.
7/10 on this one.
This is day 61 of #100DaysToOffload
