It took a few tries to start to dial this in and involved loosening up the grind, pulling a single at medium dose and medium heat and cutting the shot short on my Pavoni. This resulted in a luscious, more sweet than sour shot, with a nice balance between the two. The next strong flavor was grapefruit zest and a mild floral overtone that became bitter chocolate a minute later, then a hint of cherries appeared, and finally leather. The first shots seemed bland or sour and when pulled hot were slightly acrid and lacked sweetness. But at this stage I'm finding that with a top specialty source like CC what's usually lacking is my technique, not the coffee. I look forward to playing with this SO a bit more.

BTW as part of this journey of starting to learn coffees, I've tried their Jagong Sumatra in an AeroPress the last couple of days and find it rich and syrupy using two scoops to a cup of water. Updosing seems key. I'm still playing with temperature to fully bring out the sweetness. So far it's clean, classic and not a complex cup with a hint of earthiness as a bottom note. I like it a lot with the soy creamer I use. According to their site notes, CC has been directly involved with the local source, guiding them in processing this coffee to achieve a quality breakthrough that made it suitable for being offered as a SO. http://counterculturecoffee.com/gayo?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=135&category_id=9

Mitch,

For sweetness, have you tried a more ristretto pull? I described my pull as "medium," but the flow was a bit restricted at the start and the sweetness was right there with the sourness.