This is a collab roast between us and Sky Bear Coffee. Lesa (owner) has started many incredible Nashville-based coffee companies such as 8th and Roast, and Osa, to name a few. With over 15 years of experience in roasting, she has recently started a wholesale-driven operation called Sky Bear Coffee in ambition to provide Nashville with quality Specialty Coffee that is well-sourced, scores high for quality of flavor, and is very light to medium roasted, depending on the application. One of her goals is to help the Independently-ran coffee roasters/businesses of Nashville flourish (a rarity nowadays) and find their way into the market. As we all know too well, having a brick and mortar and roasting/shop equipment is a massive undertaking, especially without investment group affiliation.

At PSCC, we have been souring all of our coffee independently, roasting our ideal profiles, and then collaborating on the production roast profile using Lesa’s Probat roaster to match our ideal Omni-style roast profile.

We recently purchased an extremely high-end coffee to carry for our next release but were shocked when it tasted completely unlike the jaw-dropping sample we tasted prior to purchasing that green coffee. Since we were short of coffee, Lesa offered this wonderful green for us to use for a short period of time. We then decided we should purchase the entire bag to use as our next official launch! She had sourced this coffee herself and had came up with the roast profile before we even tasted it. We are incredibly lucky to collab with such an experienced roaster/company, and we can’t wait to share this wonderful coffee with you all!

A Story Behind the Name

What better name to call this coffee than Midnight in New York? In order to understand this name, we need to talk about the flavors we experienced with this beautiful coffee! It’s a white wine fermentation dry processed anaerobic Castillo cultivar. It was produced by Jairo Arcila & Luz Helena Salazar from the Finca Maracay farm in Quindío, Colombia.

This unique coffee really shocked our palate with a very forward flavor of riesling white wine, followed by a crisp, mouthwatering Malic acidity that reminded us a lot of green apples. The finish truly sold us on this coffee. It has an extremely rich & creamy texture and a taste that reminded us of a really dense, layered dark chocolate dessert. Lava cake would be the perfect flavor explanation for this coffee! Combine a riesling wine, mouthwatering green apple, and a lava cake and you’ll have a wonderful flavor spectrum that is as diverse as a night out dining in the Big Apple (now, let’s talk about this coffees name!).

French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten said that he invented the Lava Cake in New York City in 1987. He took a sponge cake out of the oven before it was done cooking. He found the center to still be runny, but hot and with a desirable texture and taste. That night, lava cake was born, and has quite possibly been enjoyed every night across the globe since its conception!

Riesling has been dubbed the “unofficial wine of New York”. In the northern part of the state lies a series of 11 long and skinny lakes named the FInger Lakes. This region produces around 85% of New York’s production of Rieslings, and surely its not by coincidence! It is extremely difficult to grow wine in the severely cold, northern parts of our country, Turns out, Riesling (a cool climate wine) could adapt well to this specific climate. The lakes help create a microclimate that helps tame the cold winters while also creating a light breeze for the hot summers. It also helps that many immigrants living in this region were from Germany, where the Riesling variety is from (around the France-Germany border). Because of this favorable climate, Riesling has earned a special place for American wines, especially for innovative American producers, creating their own unique styles of flavor and sweetness.

About the Flavor

When we took our first sip of the first roast from this coffee, we were taken back a bit. It coated our tongue, surprisingly like after you eat a Doritos chip and your mouth starts to salivate. It was a near overwhelming sensation of Umami. Since this coffee has a multiple-stage fermentation process (more on that later), the enzymes, naturally occuring yeast, and bacteria truly dominate the fermentation of the cherry. The original compounds within the cherry create other compounds through chemical reactions, this is known as a Precursor in chemistry. The bean then absorbs these precursors through osmosis and diffusion (in theory) in order to produce these unique textures and flavors not common in less fermented, aka “wet” processed coffees. We were SHOCKED to learn that no white wine was actually added to this fermentation process, but if you think about it, coffee fruit is much like a grape, and this style of processing is more similar to how most wine is produced as well, in a limited oxygen environment.

About the Processing

After selective handpicking, ripe cherry is placed in an aerobic environment for 24 hours (I’d imagine in open plastic bags). After this first fermentation stage, the coffee cherry is laid in thin layers to sundry until it reaches 20% moisture content. Then, the cherry is placed in GrainPro bags and sealed for 200 hours. The sealed bag creates an anaerobic environment where the lack of air allows different enzymes, yeasts and bacteria to dominate fermentation. The result is a coffee with different flavors than if the coffee was fermented in an open container. Finally, the cherry is released from the bags and is laid out under the sun again on raised beds to finish drying (some people have said the coffee drys to 10.5%, others as low as 7%, astonishingly. I doubt it is that low for this coffee, since we had to use a pretty significant amount of heat since the beans were absorbing so much of it). If the weather is unsuited for drying, they may use a mechanical dryer to finish drying the cherries. Once dry, the coffee is stored for 20 to 30 days in a temperature-controlled warehouse in Armenia before being transported to the warehouse in Manrepo, Armenia.

Ok, that’s pretty cool! Mechanical dryers AND a climate controlled warehouse for a short period of time post drying?! That is a nice commitment to quality and consistency!

About the Roast

Because of how this coffee was processed, you may see some oily spots on your beans. No, it is not a darker roast, and we surely didnt go anywhere near 2nd crack! (the beans were still popping from 1st crack after they arrived in the cooling tray…lol).

Our first roast of this coffee was very light. It tasted phenomenal and incredibly umami/coating, it was almost overwelming (but in a good way). We then decided we should roast even lighter because we saw some oily spots on the beans. Those spots are the sugars escaping the bean, and we thought if we roasted 4 degrees lighter it would not only trap more those oils from escaping out of the bean, but it would also hold in those sugars and make the coffee even sweeter. We were right! (Post 7/10 roast date) You can taste even more vibrant and crisp green apple with an enhanced sweetness, making up for a slightly less textural experience and slightly less dark chocolate bitterness.

The new roast was a whopping 10 degrees lighter of an end temperature than our Ethiopian Flower Power and 4 degrees lighter than our original test roast of this coffee.

I believe great green coffee should often taste amazing though a fairly wide window of roast temperatures. This is the case here.

Resting the Roast

I’d imagine many of you will hear the word “oils” and would be curious about degassing time and preserving freshness via mitigating oxidation. I can say with confidence that I’ve had very light roasted coffees with much more oils than this (because of a similar fermentation process) that tasted absolutely stunning 30 days after roast. We’ve found with our roast profiles and packaging techniques that our coffees tend to peak after about 30-50+ days. I’d highly recommend waiting at least a few weeks before opening the bag, and not being worried about the coffee starting to lose freshness because of the oils from its fermentation process. You may also want to go through this coffee slightly faster than typical because it might be more prone to oxidation post rest (aka - opening the bag for the first time, exposing beans to oxygen).

Another thing I’d recommend is after you’ve opened the coffee bag, do not tilt the bag upside down to pour your beans out. Instead, keep the bag upright and scoop the beans out with a deep spoon or tablespoon measurer. This will ensure the carbon dioxide and other inert gasses remain INSIDE the bag, which will keep an oxygen layer for quite some time that works to protect the beans from oxygen molecules which then lead to quicker oxidation, creating stale, cardboard-like tastes in your brew.

How to Brew

This coffee is extremely soluble. It is ridiculously easy to extract and brew with. I would keep your brewing recipe the same as for any experimental, faster flowing coffee (often requiring a slightly finer grind). On the flip side of things, you will want to avoid over extraction. To do this, you may want to use a flat bottom brewer which can help tame those sour and bitter flavors from under and over extraction like when using a conical brewer combined with a coffee that has a very fast flow rate.

If you do this, I’d keep your water temperature the same with what works well for you and your Brewing Ecosystem. The big thing i’d recommend is altering your waters Alkalinity (no, you cannot filter this out using Brita or your fridge, etc.) if it’s below around 30-45mg/L or higher than around 50-55mg/L. Every district does water reports and publishes them, and most clearly define what mg/L the local Alkalinity is. You can also get custom water by using mineral packets specifically designed for coffee brewing like Third Wave Water, Perfect Coffee Water, Lotus Coffee Water, or Aquacode brands (for the Nashville locals, keep in mind our Alkalinity is near 80mg/L. It’s HIGH for filter coffee brewing, and tastes pretty gross for pour overs/batch brew. I really wish cafes knew about this and took it more seriously.).

I believe many of these kinds of coffees taste terrible with certain water profiles. The intense acidic flavors can become much too sour/sharp with low alkalinity, or taste like dirt/flat soda with high alkalinity. Most of the US is plauged by sub-par water for coffee brewing. NYC is too soft, same with the Pacific Northwest, South East and the North East parts of this country. On the other hand, 80% of the US is often too hard. If you invest in different water mineral solutions, you just might notice a massive difference, especially if you blend a percentage of your cities filtered water + these mineral packs diluted in distilled water + even more distilled water to control variables (it’s a fun way to brew and understand water, but we’ll save this for another time).

*It should be noted the water that has worked well for us for light roasted, clean, washed coffees in the past (like third wave water or lotus coffee water) has underperformed with this coffee. While cupping, we found we actually favored Nashville water (an alkalinity of around 80mg/L). Not to say this water would be great as a pour over, but we do believe the more alkalinity, up to a point, is beneficial for this coffee. Keep that in mind if you live in a soft water area, or this coffee may be hard to like.

We’ve found that Aquacode is our 2nd favorite water for this coffee doing a blind cupping test. It supposedly has a pH of 7.4 compared to third wave at 6.6. There are Ainsley different mineral makeups in these packets but from my limited understanding is, even though it doesn’t say on paper, Aquacode has more alkalinity than third wave, thus helping improve the overall balance of this coffee, without it tasting too harsh. All in all, we’d recommend using slightly more Alkaline brew water just to try it out with this coffee and see what you think!

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About the Variety

When Jairo Arcila and his wife Luz purchased Finca Maracay in 2008, the farm was planted entirely with the Caturra cultivar. A couple years later, they turned half of their production into growing the Castillo cultivar, since it is resistant to Coffee Leaf Rust disease. This disease is a massive worry for any coffee farmer, as it can completely destroy their business. Luckily, they planted Castillo in 2012 - the same year this disease hit Central america and wiped out many operations, and producers are still being affected by it to this day.

I wish more people talked about this buzzword. It’s not very well understood my most coffee drinkers that are aware of this mysterious phenominon. It’s a damaging fungal infection that rots out the leaves of the plant which causes them to fall off. When these leaves dont get the sunlight through photosynthesis, it significantly lowers yields and then kills coffee plants when it’s not taken care of quickly with pesticides. It can start with one plant, then take out entire plots of plants within just 24-48 hours. It is known to spread through wind, but can also spread from animals or a farmers clothing. Even worse, it can grow immune to even the latest fungicides, and expecting third world countries to treat their plants over and over again with fungicides, or even quarantining hundreds, if not thousands of plants is nearly impossible…especially with the low price market of coffee per tree.

Coffee Leaf Rust, or “Hemileia Vastatrix” has been around for over a century and Scientists still haven’t came up with a cure since they’re still not sure how this disease becomes resistent to available treatments. What they have been doing for many decades is trying to create rust resistant hybrids. That’s surely one of the best ways at combating this disease currently (even though some well known resistant varieties become non-resistant over time…welcome to evolution).

After 23 years of research and development, Castillo was released in 2005. There have actually been 6 different types of Castillo that were specifically designed for 6 different regions in Colombia. Now, we hear that there are around 40 different improved versions of Castillo since the disease continues to return, yet, we also hear it has also been Leaf Rust and Coffee Berry Disease free for certain producers. What I can tell you is farmers are still planting and harvesting this variety, which probably means it is succeeding for many producers across Colombia.

What I have held off telling you is that Castillo is deemed inferior in cup quality compared to other common varieties in Colombia. I know people who claim they can blindly taste and point out the Castillo cups on the table, and I also have heard of studies where people are blindly tasting an array of coffee varieties and are grading Castillo 90+ points. Whether or not its a fair test, or the variety is being driven by unique fermentation methods, is up in the air. BUT! What I can tell you is that I really enjoy this coffee! I’ve had the pleasure of tasting over 10,000 coffees (all above 86 points) from over a thousand roasters across the globe. I’d say I have a pretty solid idea of a what a great coffee tastes like compared to a terrible one, and I think that’s much more important than what a grade can give a coffee. We’ve even had an incredible Caturron variety from Tim Wendelboe recently where some (very experienced) importers were grading it 90+ and others graded in the low 80’s. If you know coffee grades, you’ll understand how massively different this is - it’s the difference between “absolutely amazing” and “very basic” in Specialty Coffee.

Food For Thought

The Specialty Coffee industry is full of pretentiousness and ego, often guided by ignorance and what others deem as “trendy” at the time. What is currently happening is the exploitation of Microlot coffees from people guided by ignorance and poor business decisions for sustainability (at least this is how I understand it based on some of the stories I’m told). When you search for the “very best” coffees from a producer for a given harvest period, you are purchasing coffee from specific lots that have been separated from the rest of the harvest pool based on flavor and a quality cup score. In return, producers will make more for these coffees but are left with selling the other lower performing lots at a cheaper (or even really, really cheaper) price point. What you’ve then done is robbed the producers ability to have a much higher quality cup score for ALL of their coffees (if they were to blend the great ones in with the not-so-great coffees) instead of just a few really great ones.

Of course, there are ways to combat this like through education for simpler things like drying coffees or picking only the ripe cherries, etc. and then through more advanced processing education/techniques. All of this should be aimed towards helping that producer create a better and better quality cup score ACROSS THE BOARD for ALL their coffees, with aims for consistent improvement, year after year. As someone who’s far away from this side of the industry, I’d imagine it’s incredibly difficult for this to happen, and i’d also imagine it’s incredibly easy for people to take advantage with a bigger bag of cash that secretly has no plan to return back to work with that producer again.

This is an area we’re questioning how we can support kind and practical importers that value doing good for farmers just as much as they do for finding quality green, especially as we continue to grow.

What I want coffee drinkers to understand is that there’s a massive void of education in the coffee industry, from Baristas to Roasters to Coffee Drinkers and Influencers. When you think “Castillo” you may think “low quality and don’t waste your time”, and not the more important and much deeper side of the story of “WHY” that variety was created, widely planted, processed, and then sold to exporters and importers that saw value in this coffee. Not only based on the understanding of “why” that variety and processing method exists, but also based on that knowledge so when they taste the coffee, they don’t have low expectations simply because they know Castillo as a low performing variety based on what their friends say.

What I intentionally left out until now is that this coffee scored 88 points. To people who are unaware, that is absolutely incredible and well above normal, even for most micro lot coffees. So, please think about that for a second. Question your beliefs for what coffee is, and what coffee should be and accept that things exist beyond our current understanding. Pleasant surprises like tasting a multi-fermented grainpro natural anaerobic Castillo and actually being wonderfully shocked and in love with what is has to offer…Is the reason why I love coffee and this industry. I hope you all can reflect on a time where the walls of ego and experience were non-existant and allowed you to experience the joy and surprise of great coffee.

Cheers to times like these!

-Connor