Thanks gentlemen for your reviews. Blend #3 is Scout's Honor by Handsome Coffee Roasters. This time around I arranged a group taste test at our regular Friday get-together. Below are some of the comments:

Ian Stewart wrote:Dan, thanks for bringing in the mystery bean today. Not a coffee I would drink all the time but a refreshing respite from my normal chocolate and caramel bombs. I found the coffee to have a very interesting sweet and sour flavor somewhat like an orange sour ball. The coffee had a very crisp and tart finish but a considerable amount of sweetness on the front. I also found the fruitiness to become much pronounced as the coffee cooled. I would have guessed a bourbon from Central America but my hit rate on guessing regions is not great. Once again thanks for making the Friday get togethers so interesting.

Other comments: "Medium-light body with nice sweetness in the first part of the shot giving way to a pleasing orange-peel citrus note toward the end" and "Super sweet start, finish with cherry lemonade."

Walt Fulcher wrote:Thanks for including us on your mystery bean this morning. I did smell the espresso before tasting but I don't recall picking up any of the aroma I tasted in the cup. The first thing that hit me was lemony tart. I didn't pick up alot of sweetness, definitely bright and tangy and the mouth feel was silky. After another taste and as it started to cool I enjoyed it more but I was shocked at the difference with 4 oz of water added as an Americano. I typically don't drink Americano because to me they just water down the espresso and ruin the favor.

This coffee was transformed by the Americano, the tartness disappeared and the full flavor came thru and I did taste a little of the cherry lemonade another attendee referred to. Still citrus and fruit forward but delicious.

If sweeter I would guess Honey Badger, less lemon similar to Apollo Gavilan. But it does seem to be in the Central/South American family. Maybe process had something to do with the favor profile.

Another participant said "I really enjoyed it as an Americano, probably at a 4:1 ratio. I don't mind some brightness in my espresso but I like to balance it out with darker notes."

Walt's guess of Intelligentsia Honey Badger was probably influenced by tastings of it on other Fridays. I agree with this characterization to a degree; to my taste, Scout's Honor is far, far sweeter than Honey Badger. As Dave, Sherman and Nicholas noted, capturing the sweet juiciness it claimed wasn't easy. Too cool and the acidity was overwhelming, too hot and the acidity dropped along with the complexity. I tried a range from 199°F to 202°F with moderate doses (e.g., a 18 gram VST basket dosed to 18 grams) and near double ratios; the higher range appealed most to me because of the taste transitions mentioned above. On a hunch, I tried the Elektra Microcasa a Leva with high initial temperature by intentionally letting the group overheat and then locking in a cold portafilter for ~30 seconds before the extraction. While levers are often branded as more difficult, I think this brew temperature profile simplified the preparation as it was easy to nail a satisfying espresso without risking a lip-puckering finish.

This thread is now open for comments/questions.

And this 'spro is listed on their website under the "C" heading for comfort ?

Somehow I don't think it was meant as "comfort food". The flavors are certainly familiar/comfortable, just turned up to 11. That said, the retail price of $22/lb is certainly eyebrow-raising.

Based on their description on the home page, they define comfort as consistency, not like the dictionary definition of comfort food ("food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal" in Merrian-Webster).

FW little it's worth after reading the first two reviews (Jim and then Dave) I wondered if they were chewing on Klatch World's Best espresso blend. Enjoyed the reviews.

Thanks guys, enjoyed all your reviews on this bean. I would really like to try this one. And I have some new espresso vocab I will steal; "W3OJ". Love it!

HB#3: Scout's Honor from Handsome Coffee Roasters

Apologies for the late posting. HB#3 mystery blend arrived in a plain black bag on May 10. The beans were small, roasted to a medium level, and emitted an enticing dry aroma. A preliminary "cupping" using an Aeropress (with the new Able Disk Fine metal filter) produced an enjoyable brew with far more acidity than HB#2.

I spent the next three days trying to nail a good espresso shot. Two words suffice to sum up my efforts: sour orange! I tried doses from 14g to 16.5g, brew ratios from 50% to 100%, brew temps from 90C to a blistering 98C*, even pulled my Mazzer Major out of storage (just in case this roast responded better to flat burrs). The sweet tart orange flavor profile was interesting, but I never mastered this roast. Perhaps I should have reinstalled the mechanical preinfusion device for my Spaz S1V1; it's possible that a slow pressure rampup helps.

So this begs the question: is there such as thing as an espresso blend or roast? Not really. Espresso is a coffee brewing method that involves extraction under pressure. You can call anything an espresso roast. But some beans and roasts work better than others for espresso. Espresso tends to magnify certain flavor components. In this case, the acidity borders on overwhelming.

On the other hand, HB#3 makes a lovely non-espresso brew. Using the Hario V60, Clever Coffee Dripper, Aeropress, or vac pot, it was a simple matter to get excellent results. The delicate orange acidity sparkles in a light-bodied, almost tea-like beverage. IMHO this blend should be marketed for brewing coffee, not espresso.


the right way to brew this coffee

Conclusions
A difficult blend for espresso, dominated by intense orange acidity. Recommended if you are looking for a challenging change of pace. My best results came from grinding fine, downdosing, and very high brew temperatures. When you get tired of struggling, enjoy the rest of the bag as non-espresso brew.

* which caused HX flush-like sputtering at my elevation, but finally tamed the acidity

The interesting thing about this coffee is that shortly after you posted this, they changed the ingredients. I believe it used to be made up of their Los Naranjos and I believe one of their adventure SOs, but now it's made up of a Colombian that give much more "comfortable" tasting notes of "Nougat, Caramel, and Toffee." This is much more comfort food espresso than Third Wave OJ, and while one poster mentioned that comfort food doesn't seem like what they were going for when they said "comfort," I think that this is more what people expected when they called it "comfort." They both sounded GREAT to me, but I'm not super hard to please.

Just throwing it out there,
-Dave-

It would be interesting to review a coffee that actually lasts long enough to be available after the review is posted

Maybe the coffees are getting changed/eliminated because of the reviews? This might be one effect of doing the reviews blind, pre-conceived notions of what a particular coffee/blend should be, aren't being reinforced in the reviews.

Or maybe I'm just mistaking causation for correlation again...