Costa Rica Coffee - new improved

We were talking about favourite coffees at work today, and Stefan was saying how much he enjoyed our Costa Rica San Marcos de Tarrazu in his morning latte.

Now our Tarrazu has a bit of a history.

When I first took over the company we stocked a generic type of Costa Rica, namely Costa Rica SHB, which stands for "strictly hard bean". This is an indicator of quality expectation, but gives no information on where in Costa Rica the coffee is grown. It tasted "ok", nothing to write home about and really lacked any distinctive qualities. My thought then was why would anybody want to buy this coffee?

My views were changed significantly when I went to a trade conference at which Costa Rican coffees were being promoted. I was unaware of the range of speciality coffees available from this country, and just how distinctive each one tasted.

If you want more information on Costa Rican coffees in general visit their website at www.scacr.com

The areas that stood out for me were Tarrazu, Tres Rios and Orosi (apologies for the lack of an accent, limitations of the software). The Orosi is the lowest grown of the three coffees, and this is reflected in the softer cup. Next up was the Tres Rios, with is fine balanced acidity, however the one that did it for me was the Tarrazu, San Marcos. The coffee is grown on volcanic soil and at some of the greatest altitudes in the country; I could really taste the fire (if such a thing is possible) in the coffee. I couldn't wait to stock it in our shop.

However, thinking that I had found a gem I was really disappointed with this coffee when I got home. The "fire" I had experienced in the tasting just wasn't there.

To cut a long story short, I was doing a tasting of coffees from around the world with some new members of staff, and I was struck at just how poor the Tarrazu tasted.

I went away and roasted up some new samples and found that we had been roasting the coffee just a little on the light side and this severely limited the flavour we were achieving in the cup. It shows you that even a pro can get it wrong sometimes!

Now we roast to a full medium colour and that wonderful flavour has made a welcome return, just ask Stefan.