Seattle Reviews

Quietly complex aroma: sweet, discreetly roasty, with suggestions of leather, chocolate, apricot, perhaps pear. In the cup gentle, low-key, richly fruity with a lush apricot that flirts with chocolate.

A gently roasty, light-bodied blend: sweet, balanced, with fresh leather, grapefruit and sweet herb notes, lemon thyme perhaps. Slightly astringent in the finish.

Straightforward, simple but satisfying dark-roast: cleanly roasty, pleasantly smoky but without burned or excessive bitterness. In cup and finish the roastiness takes on a toasty, campfire chocolate character.

The aroma doesn't provoke much anticipation: roasty, edge of burned, midtoned, without range or nuance. Softens and complicates in the cup, displaying a pleasantly wine-toned balance of sweet acidity and a discreetly bittersweet roastiness. Simplifies again in the rather sharp finish.

The aroma is flat and thin. In the cup sweetly but thinly roasty, on the edge of burned, with a lean mouthfeel. Nearly salvaged by pleasantly delicate fruit notes - pear perhaps.

Pungently roasty with cantaloupe notes in the aroma. In the cup softens nicely, allowing some sweet lemon and grapefruit notes to glisten in the smooth, rather delicate roastiness. Sweet but gently astringent finish.

Either the green coffee was not up to the dark roast style, or the roast was conducted too aggressively: the roast dominates, producing a pungent and bitterly monotoned cup, with little to no nuance. The cup rounds and softens a bit as it cools, turning tenuously bittersweet.

The reader who nominated this coffee rated it an 85 -- 89, citing its "great aroma and floral hints," and adding that it is "a great breakfast coffee." I'd agree, though the sample I cupped may have sat around in its elegant bag too long. It belongs to the authoritative rather than the delicate style of Panama: intensely acidy, yet still displaying the bright, high-toned sweet nut, floral and fruit notes characteristic of this underappreciated origin. I felt the profile suffered from bitterness, however, which turned the acidity a bit too assertive for many coffee drinkers.

A big, simple, acidy coffee only partly tamed by the darkish roast. The result is a bit of a hybrid: medium-bodied, roasty but acidy, reasonably sweet, but with only a hint of Antigua-style nuance, some fruit perhaps. The finish is slightly astringent, always a danger when an acidy coffee is brought to a darkish roast. The nominating reader Carolina Facciani of Redondo Beach, California rates the Starbucks Guatemala she or he tasted a 95 to 100, declaring it "one of the best tasting coffees I've had next to Costa Rica's coffees." The big acidity and relative lack of nuance does make this coffee resemble high-grown Costa Ricas.

"Light-bodied with an almost rioy flavor. Quakers, soft, wild-looking. Could have been better if roasted a little darker?" (78). Rioy is a hard, medicinal flavor taken on by some dry-processed coffees during the drying. Quakers are beans that fail to take the roast and remain light, robbing the coffee of flavor and body. Ken: "Burned tones, faint sweetness, not much else" (78).

The darkish roast turns the fruit tones dry and crisply grapefruity. Some charred and perhaps musty notes, but when juxtaposed with the sweet fruit they read as a sort of pleasantly burned chocolate.

Dryly acidy but sweet, expansively fruity, distinctly floral. A crisp roastiness turns the fruit toward chocolate. Only a very slight bitter astringency mars this otherwise luxuriously exotic cup.

Woody, dominated by a rather thin, roasty bitterness. Attenuated floral notes play at the top of the profile, dry cocoa-toned fruit toward the middle, but a rather shallow roast taste dominates.

Seductively sweet, delicate, gently acidy. The tartly sweet fruit tones suggest raisins or dates. Rather light-bodied, but appropriately so given the general delicacy of the profile.

A classic American breakfast coffee: intensely and brightly acidy but juicily sweet, deeply dimensioned, with meadowy hints of flowers that deepen toward fruit in the finish. As the finish fades, we 're left again with a shimmer of flowers.

When hot, understated but pleasantly sweet, with a hint of spicy fruit complicating the mildly burned, pungent tones. The aftertaste is unyieldingly bitter, however, and when the cup cools the coffee lands on the palate with a flat, unrelieved, carbon-toned thud.

A fresh citrusy sharpness complicates the dark-roast bittersweetness. The bitter tones intensify in finish, but never completely master the sweetness, which persists pleasantly through aftertaste.

A deep, resonant pungency envelops the Kenya dry wine and tart berry tones, giving them a sexy fresh-sweat twist. This odd, rough-yet-smooth pungency is a Peet's trade mark, and only occasionally found in coffees dark-roasted by competitors. Here it supports without obliterating the citrus and berry freshness of the Kenya.

Rich Kenya wine tones dominate, buoyed by shimmers of citrus and berry. A complex sweetness blooms as the cup cools and the dry wine tones soften. A fine coffee, although I missed the echoing dimension of the very best Kenyas.

Under the taste of the darkish roast style earthy, but not a sweet or inviting earth. A bit hard (no pun), without depth, bounce or resonance. A tobaccoey, salty tickle in the finish.