Today marks the second coffee we’ll be sipping from Thirty-Thirty Coffee Company in Peoria, Illinois.
I have to admit, I was incredibly surprised by how tasty yesterday’s Ethiopia Hachira was—my palate is still recovering from all the excitement!
Welcome to my Table, here in the corner of this cafe. Today we are sipping a cup of Thirty-Thirty Coffee’s Guatemala San Juan. Feel free to pull up a chair.
The San Juan Microlot was grown near the township of La Libertad in the Northwestern coffee growing region of Huehuetenango. The micro-climate of La Libertad lends to this coffee’s delicate acidity and fully integrated sweetness.
Unfortunately, again, there wasn’t much I could find about this coffee while researching it. (Please, importers—practice a little transparency with the products you’re peddling to the general public; buyers and consumers alike have a right to know where their coffee comes from and what goes into it).
Since we don’t know much about the San Juan Microlot, let’s just get right down to it.
the basics:
origin: La Libertad, Huehuetenango, Guatemala
farm: San Juan Microlot
elevation: 15252 meters above sea level
cultivars: Caturra, Catuai
process: fully washed, patio dried
certifications: standard
the coffee:
The cup starts off with a thick, heavy, muddled sweetness that concentrates directly on the tip of the tongue. There’s a slow, steady bed of molasses that streams down the middle of the tongue and coats over the entire palate while a sprinkling of brown sugar tickles and entices the taste buds. Meanwhile, dried fruit sweetness hits the sides and back of the tongue—raisin, fig, and currant.
As the cup cools off, the cup clears a bit and all of the flavors become more distinguishable. They get a lot brighter too!
The molasses thins out and tastes more like sweet Tupelo honey. The raisins seem to evolve in reverse, first becoming juicier, then becoming sweeter, until the acidity of green grapes fully emerges. This is about the time that a geyser of pears, apples, and orange blossoms erupts.
Medium body; syrupy mouthfeel; green grape acidity; clean finish.
the bottom line:
The Guatemala San Juan, from Thirty-Thirty Coffee Company, didn’t last too long on my coffee bar. Not because it was so delicious, but because it was so tricky to figure out. The first several cups I made with my Hario and my Chemex really didn’t turn out too well—it always turned out understated, under-flavored, and totally muddled.
I wasn’t impressed. Until I made it in my Clever.
In the Clever, the cups started off sort of muddled and unclear again, but pretty darn tasty; but when they cooled off—when they got to room temperature, even—they got a whole lot better, a whole lot more delicious, a whole lot clearer. When this coffee cools off, it is truly a revelation.
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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.