About the Roasters

I received these coffees compliments of Vince Piccolo, a long time acquaintance and coffee professional in Vancouver, who now runs 49th Parallel roasters, one of the premier roasters in Canada, and even North America. Vince and his brother Sam are well known as the proprietors of Cafe Artigiano, and their early and important support for internet coffee fora, and for Barista competitions.



About the Coffees

The espresso and brewing coffees overlapped in the beans used, and both used roasts in the light to light-medium range; but they were quite different in expression.

The brewing coffees are high quality third wave roasts with their characteristic background of coffee cherry flavors. This is a pleasing taste, but both fairly generic and fairly loud. The trade off is that in these light roasts, the origin flavors pop. The brew coffees should be consumed within about 10 to 12 days post roast, since after that the coffee cherry flkavor tend to drown out everything else.

The washed Yrgacheffe Dumersu is a standout; being very pure tasting, with a seductive floral, apricot and chocolate notes that can compete well with any for the current Geishas, and earning a 93 score with me. Note, that the current offering is the Chelectu, from the same micro region, but which I have not tasted. The Kenya Gachata is a characteristic "red wine" style, with cloves, molasses, blackcurrant and blackberry, earning a 90 score. The Guatemala Antigua San Juan is a great example of that region, with a strong toasted almond note fronted with enough apple and pit fruit acidity to keep it interesting. It scored an 88.

The espresso coffee are done with slightly darker, but still lightish roasts. The Epic has a background of candied sugar (i.e. very light caramel flavor), that combined with the fruit flavors yields a high key, very sweet shot. The current iteration is the washed Yrgacheffe; but the flavors are more generic -- lots of put fruit and sweetness, but lacking the characteristic florality. Vince says these roasts are to achieve a taste profile for each blend, and this one succeeds well. If you like Counterculture's Apollo, you will love this blend too. The Old School has more slightly more caramel and body; but still carries a good acidic pop. When pulled well, it carries the distinct toasted almond flavor of the Guatemala in the background. When I pulled the Old School well, I liked it better than the Epic, due to its body and more complex roast tastes. But mostly the added pop and sweetness of the Epic outdid it. The Old School, not surprisingly, has an edge in milk. Both would rate around 88 to 90

For me the brew coffees worked best with an exceptionally fine grind; and the espressos at medium grind, high dose, high temperature, and ristretto/normale pull.

i didn't realize that caffe artigiano and 49th parallel were headed by the same folks!

I brought a pound of Epic home from a quick trip to Pasadena (Copa Vida multiroaster cafe), and just finished half of it. All normales, all on my Livietta. It totally broke me free of my deep-chocolate comfort-spro fixation of late. So sweet, so fruity, it kinda blew my mind. Definitely one of the best and most user-friendly blends i've pulled in my home.

Don't know about ownership, but Cafe Artigiano and 49th Parallel maintain separate corporate offices. I have been to both; very nice of them to sell single bags to consumers. The C.A. office has roasting facilities. The 49th building is very large, so I would assume it has roasting too, but I am not sure.

I should clarify ... As far as I know, Vince is 49th Parallel, and Sammy is Artigiano; brothers running separate businesses. Both used to be Artigiano ten years ago.

Hi!

So happy you liked the coffees. It was an interesting year for sourcing, especially with a flare up of leaf rust in the 2013 harvest year for centrals. This year proved to be a challenge with finding lots amidst a 30% decline in yields in Guatemala for instance. There were good coffees to be found of course! We just had to search with even more focus than normal.

Also, we wanted to mention that 49th Parallel and Caffe Artigiano haven't been affiliated in some time, and none of the Piccolo brothers are owners of Artigiano currently. I believe Artigiano is owned by a large diner group now, but I'm not sure exactly the name of the group so I won't speculate. Vince sold Artigiano in 2006, though 49th was still supplying coffee to Artigiano until 2011.

So, in short, it's just us at 49th

Kind regards,

Laura Perry
Green Coffee Buyer
49th Parallel Coffee Roasters