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Rare Reserve XOC #1
Rating: 2.00 / 5
A somewhat mixed bag of flavours from the Danish roastery Have A Coffee, and part of their Barrel Aged Coffee-series: This one having spent 3 weeks in a rum barrel from the Danish Skotlander Rum.
While the label promises an exciting coffee, I found myself struggling to highlight anything more than dark chocolate, almost burnt sugar/caramel, and the rum being almost nonexistent. Not a bad coffee, but nothing special either.
Coffee Name: Rare Reserve XOC #1
Roastery: Have A Coffee
Farmer/Producer: Robson Rhodes
Processing: Natural, Barrel Aged
Roast Degree: Medium, City +
Taste notes: Dark Chocolate, Dark Sugars, Toffee, Molasses, Rum, Vanilla
MASL: 1210
Variety: Yellow Caturra 785
Smooth Sailing in Troubled Waters
Pillaging the local liquor store, I found this coffee inconspicuously on a shelf of newly arrived inventory. Excited yet admittedly slightly defeated, I left the store; not with liquor but with coffee. The reflective bronze bag and intriguing label descriptors told me I was in for a boozy treat, and the valve on the bag backed that statement with a spiced aroma of rum, pungent sugars, and slight exotic fruits.
Looking at the label, and coerced by the aroma, my expectations were slowly informed. Grown 1,210 meters above sea level in Minas Gerais, Brazil, I was initially surprised by the fruity aroma – especially with the Yellow Caturra variety where previous ventures have left impressions of more “generic” coffee notes, honey-like sweetness and, at best, a citrus note. If taste was half as good as the aroma, I was in for some smooth sailing down liquor lane. Foreshadowing that sailing on a lane might not be as pleasant as initially expected.
Acknowledging that the bag was picked up in a local store and not from the roastery itself, the coffee might have been slightly more off roast-date than I normally aim for. As such, no time to waste.
Testing the coffee on my “test rig”, this setup very rarely gives the best results but it does show of all coffee I brew with as many fixed variables as possible.
The resulting brew yielded an aroma of dark chocolate, cocoa powder, burnt caramel, and a hint of toffee. Absolutely no acidity to speak of, a sweetness mostly reminiscent of the burnt caramel and slightly boozy rum notes. Body was medium and clean, but hollow and bland. When cooled down, the rum note became more noticeable but very far from being the main aromatic or taste note. Generally, the cup provided a lingering astringent and dusty aftertaste with slight rum-like notes.
Test Rig: 15g of coffee to 220g of water (1 : 14.67 ratio) aiming for a total brew time of 3 minutes on the Kalita Wave 155 Tsubame, original filters.
Water profile of 80 GH and 20 KH, with general hardness equally split between Magnesium and Calcium, and temporary hardness from sodium bicarbonate.
Pouring structure of 45s bloom and a single slow pour until final brew weight is reached, and water temperature of 92 degrees Celcius.
Why’s Rum Gone?
With the disappointing trial on the test rig, I felt a storm brewing. Hollow and bland and no sweetness told me I might have underextracted a bit. The lack of acidity and brightness could be down to ratio, the Kalita favouring sweetnes, and the water profile. However, the sweetness I normally find prominent from the Kalita was not present here, leaving me slightly perplexed as to how I could get the very high sweetness and body mentioned on the label. No acidity was at least no surprise, but no rum notes in a rum-barrel-aged coffee should tell you that something is not as it should be.
I gave the Kalita more tries, this time increasing the ratio from 1:14.67 to 1:15.5 and then changing from a single pour after bloom to two pours, the first being quite turbulant. The resulting cups gave more sweetness, with the cocoa powder leaning more in the direction of dark chocolate and the molasses note transforming more towards toffee and butterscotch, and the two pours docked vanilla notes in the cup. The body remained medium, but with the sweetness came a more gritty mouthfeel and a tannic, almost woody, dusty dryness. Still no rum to speak of, except a slight funky boozyness when cooled quite heavily.
Subsequent brews with immersion-style brewers and a V60 provided either a grainy mouthfeel and burnt caramel, bitter chocolate and woody notes or thin, harsh and very hollow brews. This coffee definitely does not shine in fast-flow cone brewers, and the astringent, harsh and burnt notes seem to be slightly less present in flat-bottom brewers. The water profile was also experimented with; lowering the temporary hardness to 15 definitely provided a slightly more interesting cup, with the rum note being more present, however still presenting itself more like a woody booziness than a rum note. Changing the general hardness to favour magnesium more also brightened it up a bit. However, these changes impacted the overall mouthfeel and sweetness, and seemingly, the coffee could either be brewed as a sweet-ish, gritty, bitter chocolate brew with burnt notes or a thin, harsh and astringent tannic structure with slight boozy undertones.
Generally, this coffee was a struggle to brew, with cups constantly being a compromise between sweetness and the rum, mouthfeel and burnt flavours. While multiple pours pulled decent toffee and butterscotch notes, and vanilla was only present at higher extractions, it all came at a lack of flavour definition and the primary sales pitch for the coffee: the rum barrel. The lower extractions showcased the chocolate notes without sweetness, a thinner body, and a very slight hint of booze. One thing is for certain, though: I never achieved the rum notes I smelled when I bought the bag. I found that grinding this coffee on a more traditional burr set gave quite a large amount of fines, and I would not recommend using an immersion-style brewer then, and being mindful of too much turbulance when pouring, sticking to a maximum of two pours. Using more modern burr geometry definetely helps this coffee at least pry out those devious vanilla notes a bit more, and weirdly enough I got more body and sweetness from the modern burr set as well. Just make sure to adjust the bicarbonate accordingly.
This is by no means a bad coffee, and I do not regret buying it. That might partly also be because the price was not as astronomically high as other barrel-aged beans. But I was definitely disappointed in the constantly compromised cups, burnt back-notes, and mostly complete lack of noticable rum notes.
My best brew with the Rare Reserve XOC #1 from Have A Coffee:
Brewer: Kalita 155 Tsubame
Water Profile: 100 GH (80 Mg and 20 Ca), 15 KH, TDS: 115 ppm
Ratio: 1 : 15 (15g : 225g)
Pouring Structure: 45s bloom 37.5g, 100g pour turbulant, 87.5g pour laminar
Total Brew Time: 2 minutes 40 seconds
Taste notes: Dark Chocolate, Dark Sugars, Toffee, vanilla, rum
Body and mouthfeel: Medium thin, Clean
Rating: 2.00 / 5
