I am pleased announce that after an absence of a mere month, the Philippine Barako coffee is back. I don’t have a lot of it and this is mostly to tide me over until the Filipino Cousin Network can get me a much larger quantity in a couple months, but the important part is that it is back. Barako is now a valid selection on all the listings on the store side of the house.
The more exciting news is that it didn’t come alone. Barako is a rather tasty representative of the liberica coffees that are awfully hard to find outside of the Philippines. And while liberica is tricky to find outside of the Philippines, the fourth standard cultivar of coffee, excelsa, was one of those things I’d read about but had kind of written off ever trying short of a trip to that side of the Pacific. And the FCN dropped 4 kilos of it in my lap to play with last week.
One of the bits about excelsa that it’s worth understanding for why there isn’t a lot of this on the market is to know a bit about the coffee trees themselves. We normally refer to coffee bushes when discussing arabica coffees as they don’t grow more than about 2m tall. Excelsa, on the other hand, comes from trees in the range of 10-15m tall. Harvesting excelsa comes with a level of personal hazard comparable to coconuts, AKA plummeting death, so I understand why this is rare.
Now, the exciting thing about the excelsa is the taste, which is also a southeast Asian adventure. The primary flavor note given from the grower was “jackfruit“. If you’ve never had the pleasure of the odd not quite pineapple, not quite mango, not quite banana flowery citrus flavor of jackruit I recommend giving it a try. This way, you’ll have a reference point when I tell you that first taste of excelsa BBotE had a strong jackfuit kick, a baking chocolate mid-palate, and a long coconut finish. I don’t know what booze I’d mix this with off the top of my head but it makes me want coffee based tiki drinks.
After saying all this about excelsa, this is all a bit of a tease as it isn’t available as a selection in the store until I nail down my exact process for this bean. It is likely to show up in Sampler Pack II orders as I’ll probably have leftovers from test runs to share with people. What this does mean is that I’ll have things nailed down the when the much larger shipment of excelsa comes my way in a couple months to share with all of you.
In other news, those of you who enjoy tales of Phil vs. Lasers may be happy to know I will be attending the 2019 International Laser Safety Conference in Orlando next month. I will happily tell tales of industrial-scientific horror and history in exchange fine drink and company when not actually at the conference itself. Drop a line and say hi!