Reviews for Coffee Masters

Soft aroma, with floral top notes, and prune- or apricot-toned fruit and a hint of chocolate. Simplifies in the cup, turning gently bittersweet. The deep-toned, prune-like fruit grows more pungent, the chocolate hints drier. Smoothes out again in the impressively sweet, finish.

Nut, prune, cedar and citrus, perhaps grapefruit, in the rich, low-toned aroma. Very sweet in the cup, pungent, with continued walnut and citrus notes and suggestions of earth or moist leaves. Everything settles toward chocolate in the rich finish. The cup roughens very slightly as it cools.

A contradictory but balanced profile: The sweetly winy acidity is rounded by a cedar-toned roastiness, with raisin, apple, semi-sweet chocolate and caramel complications. Raisin is particularly prominent in the deep, gently roasty aroma, chocolate in the finish.

Intense aroma: cedar, caramel, and a hint of fruit that reads as semi-sweet chocolate. Round and full in the cup, with the pungent, cedar-toned chocolate complicated by a shimmer of orange citrus. The pleasingly pungent cedar tones turn a bit heavy and astringent in the finish.

Deeply dimensioned, low-toned, quietly complex coffee. Semi-sweet chocolate, floral top notes, and a crisp temperate fruit that I read as pear carry from aroma into the cup, consolidating on chocolate in the finish.

A showcase for the intense, sweetly tart sensation coffee people call acidity. The acidity is nuanced by tomato and orange notes in the aroma, softening toward chocolate and cedar in the cup. The acidity leaves a rich astringency behind in the short finish, but delicate orange notes outlast it in the long.

Sweet, low-toned, resonant in dimension. Distinct raisin and milk chocolate notes in the aroma. In the cup big-bodied and creamy, with a tightly woven, deep-toned, caramel- and chocolate-toned complexity.

Very sharp, carbony cup, with little richness or sweetness. Both aroma and body seem burned off the coffee by the rather aggressive roast. I also tried this coffee as espresso. In the demitasse it remained sharp, but softened and sweetened a bit in milk.

Crisp and toasty nose. In the demitasse heavy though not sharp; some sweetness but little nuance. The heaviness turns smooth in milk, expanding richly, but even there the cup remains austere and rather monolithic.

An interesting but atypical Sumatra profile: Distinctly, almost distractingly sweet vanilla tones float over the Sumatra depth, which you only sense through a kind of echo. Perfumy, at turns suggesting flowers and then nuts, the vanilla notes may be too intense for elegance, lingering straight into the aftertaste, where they turn slightly cloying.