Each time when Coffee Hound roaster and co-owner Steve Fritzen selects the coffees for an upcoming season, several factors are taken into consideration. One is the quality of the beans and experience they provide for café-customer and home-brewer alike. That is, do the beans make a good cup of coffee? Many things can happen to coffee beans from the time they are grown to the time they reach your cup. For example, proper farm management and quality control along every step of the process are crucial.
Also, factors of extreme weather, climate change, insects and disease are just a few of the many issues faced by producers.
When deciding what coffees to bring to Coffee Hound we consider what flavors the coffees will bring to the cup. To maximize flavor we source the freshest and highest quality beans the season has to offer at that time. With this being our winter season, we will be sourcing African and Indonesian coffees. We have partnered with Long Miles Coffee Project in Burundi. We also have a wonderful Papua New Guinea, a Sumatra, and our first coffee ever from East Timor.
This season’s Papua New Guinea is a beautiful, clean bean, processed at the Palingua Washing Station, and which makes a sweet cup with subdued acidity and tastes reminiscent of ripe papaya, orange candy, and dried mango. Our Sumatra is the Sumatra Crowned Garuda, a premium wet-hulled bean imbued with the unique characteristics of a Sumatran coffee. Upon tasting it, we are sure you will appreciate this full-bodied, creamy, sweet brew with a perfect combination dark-chocolaty, herbal, and earthy flavors. Lastly, our Timor was grown wild in this island’s mountainous environment, cultivated in the Estado village of Ermera, and processed at a newly established mill. This coffee is super creamy and sweet with cherry and dark chocolate flavors.
As for our house blend, our Red Dog is getting recharged with fresh new coffees this season too, combining two fair trade organic coffees. The first is from a lot that is a part of the Association de Productores Cafetaleros Jaun Marco El Palto (JUMARP), also known as “El Palto”, a cooperative located in the Amazonian Andes in northern Peru. Founded in 2003 by 35 small famers, the association now consists of 189 active members with a total area of 549 hectares in production. All members produce organic and Fair Trade Certified coffee, while women represent 40 of the organization’s families, and have had continual representation on the Board of Directors. The other Red Dog component is a Colombia. Together these coffees bring a power house taste of chocolate, balanced with sweet apple acidity and tangerine fruit.