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Dose: 20g
Ratio: 1:17
Grind: Significantly Finer than Neutral
Lab Grind: 4.0 EK43 Drip Burrs
Brew Time: 2:40
TDS: 1.34%
Extraction: 19.9%
Sensory Description:
Well-extracted cups of the Los Bellotos Bernardina are defined by their rich sweetness and creamy texture. There’s also a unique and pleasant contrast between the upfront flavor profile and the finish. At the front, you’ll notice more fruit-forward notes of concord grape, kiwi, and green apple – sweetness and malic acidity pairing well together. Towards the end and into the aftertaste, the flavors transition to more caramel, cola, and hazelnut-like notes. When brewed well, you’ll find a high degree of clarity, a low-level but pleasant liveliness, and a lot of complex sweetness.
Dial Notes:
When dialing this coffee, I recommend paying special attention to sweetness. If you’re not getting a rich sweetness and creamy texture from beginning to end, you might still need to make a few adjustments.
Under-extracted cups came across as slightly lacking in sweetness across the entire sip. This made the coffee taste more like bright lemon as opposed to the sweeter acidity associated with fruits like kiwi and apple. The low-extraction also presented with a peculiar menthol-like flavor which was interesting, but didn’t express the full potential of this coffee. The finish was also slightly astringent, causing a fuzzy texture as opposed to the more pleasant cream-like texture of more extracted cups. In this instance, I would grind finer on the next brew.
Over-extracted cups presented with more sweetness than under-extracted, but lost some of the liveliness and fruit-like complexity of well-dialed brews. Instead, I got a lot more candy-bar notes of chocolate, wafer, and caramel. The sweetness dissipated towards the end of the sip, finishing more like cocoa rather than caramel and cola. The overall flavor profile was slightly less clear and complex, though still sweet and pleasant. For cups like this, I would grind slightly coarser moving forward.
Well-dialed cups of Aril highlight the unique fermentation and processing combination of this Panamanian gesha. With an extended Carbonic Maceration combined with a washed finish, you’ll find this coffee to be exceptionally bright and lively compared to more delicate expressions of gesha. The result is a flavor profile of ripe tropical fruit like pineapple and mango, with some strawberry-like sweetness. You should expect a crisp, clear expression of fruit flavor rather than a syrupy or heavy-bodied one. The brightness and clarity in the cup also allows the floral and slightly citric notes to shine all the way through to the aftertaste.
