Reviews for Quartermaine Coffee Roasters

Sweet-toned, gently roasty aroma with distinct grapefruit notes and the barest hints of cedar and chocolate. In the cup the roast tones are sharper but still sweet, reading even more clearly as a richly pungent grapefruit with a slight chocolate cast. Deep finish with almost no astringency. A slight unevenness from cup to cup brought down the rating of this fundamentally distinguished dark-roasted coffee.

Deep, rich, roasty aroma with considerable complexity: Ken and co-cupper Rodger Owen found flowers (especially), cloves, fresh cedar, caramel. Both found the cup medium-bodied and intensely and pungently bittersweet, with shimmers of flowers and a low-toned fruity character that suggested pipe tobacco to Rodger and a caramelly fruit to Ken. Ken's sample finished cleanly and richly, even with a hint of semi-sweet chocolate, but Rodger drastically reduced his final rating owing to what he described as metallic, rubbery end notes, perhaps a mild roasting fault.

Powerful and complex. Extraordinary aroma: spice, a fresh, nostril-tingling cedar, low-toned tropical fruit, bananas perhaps. In the cup a tingle of sweet acidity, more cedar, and fruit that turns sweetly and richly tart - grapefruit, tamarind. Memories of this complexity persist in the finish, softening a mild astringency. Reader Amy Bowser nominated this coffee, calling it "clean but with huge depth and character."

This smoky, dark-roasted coffee pleased Ken and co-taster Willem Boot more in flavor than in body. Aromatics and flavor were "smoky, rich and sweet" (Ken), "dark chocolate and smoky" (Willem). Ken found the body "gritty," however, Willem "oily and heavy." The cup softened but didn't sweeten in milk, where it was "smoky and dry" for Ken with a "butterscotch finish" for Willem. Willem 85, Ken 85.

Both John Weaver and Ken admired this coffee's smooth balance, though Ken found a bit more to say about the cup than John, who writes: "Good, medium-bodied coffee with smooth flavor and aftertaste" (84). Ken: "Pleasant balance of subdued acidy and round roast tones, complicated by sweet fruit chocolate, tastes a whole lot like butterscotch in the finish" (87).