Superlost Coffee is a new roaster in Brooklyn, New York, and today we’re featuring their inaugural batch, Solo Sábado.
Solo Sábado is a Colombian coffee from Caicedonia an area known for its high altitude coffee. High-grown coffee yields less fruit on the plant, but it produces a superior quality bean, translating to a cup quality matched only by a select group of coffee-producing countries. This batch was grown at Finca El Porvenir, and processed by Cooperativa de Caficultores de Caicedonia.
Solo Sábado means “only Saturday” in Spanish. This name is significant to this batch because in the tiny region of Colombia called Caicendonia where this coffee is grown, the tradition for the past 150 years is for the coffee farmers to roast the beans as a group, but only on Saturdays. It’s a ritual for the local coffee community and they proudly celebrate the fruits of their labor on this day.
The artwork on the first bag was designed by comic book artist, Michael Zolla.*
Welcome to my Table, here in the corner of this cafe. Today we’re sipping the Solo Sábado, from Superlost Coffee in Brooklyn, New York. Feel free to pull up a chair.
THEDETAILS
region: Caicedonia, Valle del Cauca, Colombia
farm: Finca El Porvenir
producer: smallholder farmers
association: N/A
elevation: 1400 meters above sea level
cultivars: Bourbon
process: fully washed, patio dried
CUPPINGNOTES
The aroma coming off of the Solo Sábado is sweet and fragrant. It’s a fruit-forward aroma, with scents of or red berries and citrus, being propelled forward by a backbone of milk chocolate.
The flavor isn’t as sweet and pleasant as the aroma suggested it would be; it’s complex, but doesn’t possess a great clarity, which makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly what I’m tasting. The cup is fruit-forward with flavors of stewed berries (raspberry, blackberry, strawberry), cherry, and a tangy tangerine acidity, and there’s a bit of cocoa powder and dulce de leche in the background. However, unfortunately, the cup is a touch underdeveloped, so these flavors are concealed by faults like grass and starch (which becomes more prominent as the cup cools). Bummer.
FINALTHOUGHTS
Friend of the Table (and friend of mine), Joe Marrocco recently tweeted, “Coffee Roasters: please stop being afraid of the dark. Under roasted flavors; green pea, grass, straw, etc., are far more jarring. Be brave.” I definitely noticed it a couple years ago more than I do now (back when American roasters were trying to be more Nordic in their roast profiling), and Joe is right in saying that roasting too lightly is definitely every bit as jarring as roasting too dark.
And I think that’s that Superlost Coffee’s Solo Sábado suffered from—it was just a touch underdeveloped. It had plenty of pleasant fruit and sugar flavors (red berry, citrus, chocolate), but its best attributes were cloaked with starch and grassiness. Having said that, though, Solo Sábado was a solid debut effort, and I’m excited to see what Superlost has in store for the future.
*content courtesy of Superlost Coffee
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Andrew is a husband, father, dog lover, craft beverage enthusiast, content creator, and niche market Internet celebrity. Formerly of A Table in the Corner of the Cafe and The Pulitzer Project and contributor to Barista Magazine and Mental Floss, he’s been writing on the Internet for years.