Hey guys!

I am running low on greens and have been looking at purchasing one of the Crown Jewel Boxes from Royal. I was wondering if anyone has purchased or has experience with their:

Colombia La Marqueza José Luis Ortega Brix Calibrated Crown Jewel
https://royalcoffee.com/products/cj1163/

or

Rwanda Cyanika Karambi Double Washed Crown Jewel
https://royalcoffee.com/products/cj1170/

I read through all their offerings and got it down to these two but I can't decide on which one to pull the trigger. The coffee is just going to be my daily drinker and passed out to my normal circle of free-loaders. I am roasting on a Huky. Any insight?

I just got the Colombian. Their stuff is top notch.

Awesome! I just pulled the trigger on the Rawanda. I am coming off a Guatemalan so ended up deciding it would be nice to go to the African continent. Roasts and reports to follow.

I'll second the recommendation for Royal Coffee. I've purchased seven different lots of beans in Crown Jewel boxes from them. They have been consistenly excellent. They provide more detail about origin, bean statistics, roasting, and brewing for their Crown Jewel lots than any other green souce I'm aware of.
-Harlan

Had to add my recommendation for +4 on the Crown Jewels but more importantly, loving the term
"freeloaders." Chuckled out loud up here.

Boldjava wrote:loving the term
"freeloaders." Chuckled out loud up here.

Yeah, I love my friends but most conversations these days go:
"Hey how have things been? So...ummm... did you bring any of that coffee you make?"

I don't mind though, the more coffee I hand out the more excuses I have to roast and buy more coffee. Although, I have created a few monsters that now expect it and all family vacations are now expected to be coffee catered.

I picked up a box each of Sulaweisi and an Ethiopian... so far not impressed! And I have 40 lbs of this stuff! The Sulaweisi has been most disappointing. Very unidimensional and boring. I typically roast to the end of City+, and occasionally into FC. I've been brewing drip for these. The Sulaweisi has made terrible espresso drinks.

I've had much more luck with coffees from Sweet Marias.

I'm still roasting on a Hot Top. I have a TJ-067 due to arrive in a few days, so it will be interesting to see if I can get better results on more robust hardware. Still, after three weeks of roasting nothing but these crown jewel beans, then going back to some SM Ethiopian and Guatamalan beans, it's clear the SM coffees give more interesting results.

**update**

I spoke too soon, of course. Just this morning I tried another Sulaweisi roast and tweaked a few things. 350F charge temp, beans hit a nadir of 191F in my 35F garage, full power with no fan to 300F, then a little fan and 7/10 power to 350F, slow into 1C with 2/4 fan, then 3/4 fan and declining power for a 2-3 min phase until ending it at 402F and the first snaps of 2C. I allowed the beans to cool 5 minutes, then made some drip. 50g/700g water. Nice thick body, syrupy, bright acidity. My wife loved it and made a point of telling me to write down whatever I did with this roast.

drcraig wrote:I spoke too soon, of course. . .

Too bad. I was about to low ball for the rest of that box of Sulawesis.<wink>.

I could not let the Sudan Rume bandwagon get away. And when I first saw it, I wanted to try the Mexico Cosautlán Francisco Montiel Valencia Fully Washed Crown Jewel, which placed 12th in the Mexico Cup of Excellence. So I picked up one of the 2# sample packs.

Chert wrote:...I wanted to try the Mexico Cosautlán Francisco Montiel Valencia Fully Washed Crown Jewel, which placed 12th in the Mexico Cup of Excellence. .. 2# sample packs.

Roasted both the Mex and the Costa Rican from the 2 lb'er yesterday. Will tackle this weekend.

DB