Caribou Coffee's Kenya Karibu

My introduction to coffee began in a Caribou Coffee on the north side of Chicago.  I spent so much time there studying for school and the bar exam that the baristas and store manager knew me by name and drink preference.  I made some great friends and met some very interesting folks, including a WWII / Israeli War of Independence veteran, during my study sessions and when I later moved out of the city, I felt like I was leaving a chapter in my life behind.  Sometimes on the weekend, I would have to wait and fight for a table but caribou really creates a relaxed and comfortable environment.

Caribou (CBOU) is the second largest retail coffee chain in the United States behind Starbucks.  It started in 1992 outside Minneapolis, MN by Kim and John Puckett.  In 1998, they sold a majority stake in the company to Crescent Capital.  Crescent Capital later became known as Arcadia Capital.  Under Arcadia, Caribou became a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq in 2005.  Arcadia sold its shares in Caribou in 2011.

After 2005, Caribou re-made its offerings of coffee beans.  Among these is a Kenyan coffee that is only offered during parts of the year.  The beans are packaged in a sealed bag with a one-way valve.  The bag is 16oz in size.  Now Kenyan beans are usually of very high quality and great taste.  The result is in a slightly higher price.  This is the case with Caribou's Karibu.


The beans are larger in size and Caribou takes the attractive step of light roasting these beans.  As a result, the flavor smacks you in the face as soon as the bag is opened.  The predominant aroma of this coffee is blackberry.


The coffee, when brewed, actually formed a nice little crema.  Something I have found hard to achieve with Starbucks beans.  The drink is very light in body, delicate and is tart.  The blackberry flavor is very strong.  I couldn't detect any other flavors in the coffee.  The taste was very good but as I moved through the bag, the taste of the coffee began to get weaker.  The one thing I enjoy about artisan roasters as opposed to larger retailers like Caribou and Starbucks is that many indicate the roasting date.  This is a similar issue that I described earlier with my Illy-fail.  I give Caribou props on its Kenya offering.  It is a great tasting coffee, much better than I expected from a large retailer.  I suspect that the beans had not been recently roasted based on the diminished taste and that leaves me curious as to how much better this coffee could have been had I been brewing it within a week or so of its roasting.  I like that this is a light roast.  The tarty fruit flavors are really preserved well and made my coffee a very pleasurable experience.

Link Sweet Bean of Wilmette, Illinois: Sulawesi & Yirgacheffe

Trying a new roaster for this post.  Wilmette, Illinois has a charming little independent coffee roaster; Link Sweet Bean.  They opened in 2005 and have a smaller yet very geographically broad range of whole bean selections.  Their beans are available at several high-end grocery stores such as Whole Foods.  Their store is extremely comfortable with a soft, relaxing atmosphere and the folks that operate it are as nice as can be.  They even offer cupping seminars from time to time.

The first coffee from Link's that I tried was Sulawesi, an Indonesian coffee.  The beans are grown in mountainous altitudes and Sulawesi produces several different grades of quality.  The most sought after beans come from Toraja but lower altitude farms produce beans as well.  Link's Sulawesi is a Dark roasted low acidity Arabica coffee bean that has a very rich, earthy fragrance.  The beans are medium sized.




The beans were ground and the coffee was brewed in a french press.   While steeping, the earthy, syrupy aroma came pouring out of the glass. As for taste, Link's started off on a strong foot. This coffee is excellent. There is no biting aftertaste, the flavor was earthy and very complex; I thought I could taste a bit of chocolate notes in it.  The flavors lingered pleasantly after I was done with my beverage. Dark roasted coffees, to me, are either really good and rich in flavor or they are burnt and gross. Link's is the former. I would be curious to see how the flavors set up if Sulawesi was a medium roast.

There are news reports online that due to adverse climate conditions, the Sulawesi harvest this year has been smaller and as a result, the price of the beans has increased.   My 12oz one way valve package was slightly more than $10.00 at Whole Foods which is on par if not slightly better in price than offerings from other roasters.

After using up all of my Sulawesi beans, I visited Link's Sweet Bean and purchased a larger sized 16 oz bag of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.  The beans are organic and carry fair trade certification.   For those who have read my posts or talked directly with me about coffee, you know that I love African coffees.  Link's Yirgacheffe absolutely blew me away with its flavor.


The beans are smaller in size which is the norm for Ethiopian.  Unlike other Ethiopian and African coffees I have tried in the past, Link's medium roasts these beans and the flavors they extract are fantastic.  What was most striking to me about Links' Yirgacheffe was the potent citrus aroma that leaps out of the bag when first opened and carries through into the brewed coffee.


I brewed the coffee in my french press and in a Vesuviana.  It was quite evident in the french press that a very think, syrupy and foamy crema forms.  I'm starting to see this as an indicator of really high quality.  Past coffees that failed to produce this, to me, tasted more dilute and less flavorful.


The coffee had powerful citrus notes and smooth acidity.  It was an absolute treat to drink.  Its great to discover another small local roaster who has really poured heart and soul into producing such a wonderful coffee for us caffeine hogs.  I look forward to trying more in the future.

Big Red Can of Illy

I've been to Las Vegas several times and one of my favorite things to do is to visit Caesar's Palace and grab some Illy espresso at the Forum Shops.  Illy is a power house of coffee.  The company was started by Francisco Illy in the early 1930's.  Among the company's contribution to industry was a patent in 1936 for an automatic espresso brewing machine (U.S. Patent 2,152,410 - Apparatus for the Preparation of Coffee Infusions) and it also developed a method of inert gas preservation so that canned coffee beans could retain a more fresh flavor.

After World War II, the company stayed within the Illy family.  Its formal corporate name today is illycaffè S.p.A.


In 2002, Ernesto Illy published this very interesting article in Scientific American about coffee.  Its worth a read:  http://www.podmerchant.com/coffee/complexity-of-coffee.pdf


Okay, lets get to the coffee.  Illy is a blend of different Arabica.  According to the Illy website, the beans are sourced from Brazil, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Colombia, India and Guatemala.  The cans are sealed and come in both whole bean and ground versions.  The cans are 8.8 Oz and typically retails for around $15.00 per can.  The beans are average size and are medium roasted.  Illy also produces a dark roast.  The beans have an earthy balanced aroma when the lid was pealed back.








The first batch was brewed in a french press, the crema was much thinner than what I saw with artisan roasted coffees.  The resulting beverage was earthy with balanced acidity and was overall solid and great tasting.  However, the flavor of the coffee diminished as I went through the can.  Near the bottom, I started getting bad brews in the french press.  Two of the brews were very poor and watery and even failed to form the coveted brown frothy layer.  Its possible that degradation of the roasted beans contributed to this.  I made a second attempt and lowered the water temperature and this seemed to also remedy the problem, at least in part.


Illy is a solid coffee.  This was really the first time I noticed diminishing quality of the beans after opening.  I would still recommend it to enthusiasts but with some reservation.  Will this stop me from buying or drinking Illy in the future?  Absolutely not.  I will also continue to grab a cup on future Vegas trips.

Burundi Kayanza Gatare by Metropolis

Metropolis has really hit the nail on the head with a fantastic African coffee that is just a real treat for the pallet. For today's review, we are traveling to the central African nation of Burundi. Metropolis Coffee's single origin offering comes from the Kayanza region of Burundi and is processed at the Gatare Co-op.

Metropolis's Burundi can be ordered off its website and is available at its cafe and at select coffee houses and grocery stores.  http://www.metropoliscoffee.com/shop/category/coffee/single-origin/view/burundi-kayanza-gatare-p220

I purchased my 454.0 gram bag from Fox & Obel which is located on Chicago's Gold Coast.  The label on my beans indicated that they were roasted on May 26, 2011.  It seems that the "#1" designation on the label denotes the lot number the beans came from at Gatare.


The beans are a juicy medium roast Bourbon variety of Arabica. The beans are smaller in size and have a succulent brown covering locking in a flavor vault of blackberry.


The blackberry aroma is extremely prevelant in this coffee.  It smacks you in the face when you open the bag and keeps slapping you during the brewing process.  I brewed these beans in the french press at 4 minutes with water of 190 degrees F. The crema that forms in the french press is a thinner yet syrupy tan layer of caffinated heaven. The great thing about this coffee is that there is no strong aftertaste, it goes down smooth and the blackberry notes linger long after.  This is a rock star coffee.  If you try this and don't like it, then there is something not right with your coffee preferences!!!

The Way To Enjoy A Heatwave

The temp hit 101 degrees a short time ago.  Here is my tribute to the heatwave of 2011.  Brewed with Allegro's Red Sea blend.- review to come.

The Return of the Peaberry (Misha's)

Alright, its time to take a stab the second bag of coffee I picked up at Misha's Coffee when I was in Alexandria, Virginia for a trademark law seminar.  Earlier in this blog, I took a look at Jim's Organic Coffee's Tanzanian Peaberry.  Just a refresher, a peaberry is a mutant coffee berry where only one bean forms in the coffee cherry.  The smaller sized bean can pack a very full flavor.  Misha's Tanzanian Peaberry is "Full City Roasted" as described on their website:

http://mishascoffee.com/african-varietals/26-tanzania-peaberry.html

I'm going to guess that this means it's medium roast.  Color wise, its close to the Metropolis Prospero.  They have a delightful smell.  These peaberrys have a tinge of wine mixed with an earthy scent.


The beans were coarse ground and brewed in a french press with water heated to 190 degrees.  Steeping took 4.5 minutes.  The elixir in the press was a magnificent rosy brown shade with a light colored crema.  Yum!   This makes me want coffee while I write this.


I really loved this coffee.  It had been roasted only a day or so before I purchased it and the flavors and acidity filled my palate with sumptuous wine notes.   I think the wine component came through more fter brewing and overall the taste and "perk" was very concentrated.  My opinion is that Misha's peaberrys have more of that wine flavor than Jim's Organic Coffee.

 I highly recommend Misha's peaberrys the next time you find yourself in Old Town.  I would have loved to have had more time to try more of their different varietals but that means I just have something new to look forward to the next time I'm in that part of the country.

Some Recent Coffee Related Heath News Stories

Coffee has a lot of antioxidants!!!       http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9105892

Coffee is good for men's health:        http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43065205

Coffee may help protect against liver cancer:     http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6975257/



Lastly, for all you cute furry animal and coffee lovers, if the coffee is that awesome, I want a Civet:)

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/21/5893391-roasting-the-most-expensive-coffee-in-the-world-from-cat-poop