Extracto Coffee Roasters

Hey, coffee folks. Today I've got another specialty coffee review and this one is from Extracto in Portland, Oregon. The reason I was reading this book right here, Left Coast Roast, really good coffee book and one of the first that I owned. It has a whole bunch of coffee roaster recommendations in it and my fiance was in Portland and asked me for some recommendations on what to check out and I think she was just trying to pick me up a gift because she picked me up this bag from Extracto and I really have only been to Portland once, believe it or not, and haven't been to any of their coffee shops or any local roasters there. We took a leap of faith based on the recommendation from this book and she brought me back this single origin from a single farm and it's called, if you didn't see before, Ethiopia H com so I'll just read you a little bit about what Ethiopia H So the coffee is sourced from Mithad, so M-E-T-A-D, agricultural development and is a family owned business that operates the H So that's where I take it this is from, the H So Mithad strives to strengthen the local community with employment opportunities such as a workforce that is 70% women and educational opportunities including sponsorship for a state of the art elementary school with more than 300 students in healthcare for employees and medical support featuring a partnership with Grounds for Health to implement cervical cancer screening for women in the community. Mithad provides technical assistance and shares modern farming equipment with other local farmers and Mithad also has the first and only private state of the art SCAA certified quality control lab in Africa used to train both domestic and international coffee professionals. So I'm sorry for reading that whole thing. If you weren't interested in that I hope you skipped ahead but I think it's kind of nice to know about where the coffee actually comes from before it's roasted and this coffee was grown I believe it says here on this website and I don't know if it's the same thing for this particular one but Imagine it is because it's coming from the same estate but it's grown at about 1900 to 2200 meters above sea level and it's the indigenous heirloom varietal naturally processed and sun dried on raised beds. So that is Hambela the estate that this coffee comes from and this is the coffee itself and I believe it's roasted on according to this book I think they used just a dr The smell is kind of an earthy blueberry the aroma that is and once the coffee is brewed I would say more floral notes come out so let's talk a little bit about the coffee itself I just brewed up a cup with the v60 and I'm almost through the whole bag I didn't show you into my air scape here but I have probably about 60 grams left and I actually had a really difficult time with this one I'll be honest my fiance raved about this coffee she said that it was one of the best cups she's ever had super fruity and I tried to replicate it for her I obviously don't know what she tasted back when she had it at extracto in Portland but I tried to replicate it and she said I came close sometimes but I was still way off the mark and I think I just kept over extracting it I would try and course and things up and I would still have brew times that were getting over four minutes sometimes and I think maybe I was using water temperatures that were too high here and there but I think eventually I honed in on something that worked for me and the best cup I probably had brewed was with the arrow press this morning I used a pretty fine grind somewhere that's close to espresso but between drip and espresso and I used inverted method with water that was only at about 202 degrees Fahrenheit so the total brew time was about 145 and that ended up being a really good cup of coffee so I put 18 grams of coffee into the arrow press and I used about 222 grams of water so in case you want to try and replicate it if you pick up a bag of this that's the best thing I got as far as the flavor goes it's there are those blueberry undertones in it but I'd say for the most part it's kind of a strong cranberry a little bit of a dry mouth feel but syrupy up front so in terms of body it's on the lighter side it's not well it's actually a pretty thick body considering it's a lighter roast if that makes sense but I have found that it has kind of a drier mouth feel to it at least in the majority of cups that I brewed I also pull a lot of shots with this but unfortunately I didn't have too much success I think my grinder was really letting me down the Breville Smart Granite Pro that means and I think it's about time that I move on from it because it keeps locking up and I can't get fine enough for a lighter roast