Reviews for Surf City Coffee

A pungent, sweetly tart, tight-knit complexity - cedar, orange, semi-sweet chocolate - runs through the profile from aroma through the long, rich finish. Magisterial and consistent when hot; stiffens and simplifies just slightly as the cup cools.

A contradictory coffee, with sweetly buoyant flowering grass and vanilla notes shimmering above a pungent heaviness in both aroma and cup. The pungent notes hint at semi-sweet chocolate in the aroma but turn rather bitter in the cup, compromising the continuing agreeable floral character.

Softly low-toned fruit - bananas, semi-sweet chocolate - with a twist of cedar in the aroma. In the cup sweetly earthy with a fruit that displays a hint of ferment. Together this package reads as an earthy orange or raisin with a lean toward semi-sweet chocolate. Quietly rich, slightly rough finish with a pleasingly persistent earthy chocolate character.

For both Ken (90) and co-cupper Christy Thorns (91), extraordinary aroma: For Christy "freshly grown ginger, orange peel, apricot, mint and lemon." Ken stressed the "caramelly fruit that transforms completely into chocolate." In the cup, smooth, creamy mouthfeel and, for Ken, a character "sweetly and deeply tart - dark chocolate and lemon."

Intensely sweet, round fruit swoons toward milk chocolate in the aroma. Simplifies in the cup, the aromatics dominated by an intense acidity that is properly sweet but -- perhaps owing to its sheer intensity -- lacks an impression of depth and fruit.