Low-toned, sweet, gently acidy. Fresh leather and milk chocolate in the aroma. The sweet chocolate persists in the cup with an undercurrent of fruit that suggests a spicy dark cherry. Excellent dimension when hot, though the profile simplifies a bit as the cup cools.
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We found 259 reviews that match your search for el salvador. Coffees are listed in reverse chronological order by review date. Older reviews may no longer accurately reflect current versions of the same coffee.
Aroma is superbly rich, sweet and deep with chocolate notes. In the cup the powerful but low-key acidity is enveloped in richness. Ultimately more about solid balance and satisfying structure than nuance, though an apricot-toned chocolate makes itself felt toward the finish.
A sweet, round coffee whose rich, low-key fruit notes suggest cantaloupe or apricot. The mild mildewed taste coffee professionals call baggy (acquired by green coffees during long storage in dampish conditions) shadows the cup, although the coffee's fundamental sweetness pushes these notes toward an agreeable reading as spice or malt.
The moderately dark roast takes on equal billing with the green coffee here. It preserves the essential sweetness of the coffee, but pushes the acidity toward a rich, pungent citrus, a sort of roasty grapefruit, if that can be imagined. The finish is mildly but bracingly astringent.
Some sweetly lush apricot fruit makes itself felt around the edges of the dominating dark roast. Otherwise this cup is entirely about an aggressive roast style (richly burned and mildly astringent) rather than El Salvador bourbon coffee.
When hot, rich and balanced, with gently bright grapefruit tones shimmering inside a crisp, invigorating roastiness. As the cup cools the citrus tones turn a bit sharp and the roastiness leans toward burned.
Roasty, sweet, and round in the nose. In the cup the roastiness reveals a sharp bitterness, brightened by a hint of floral sweetness that softens toward burned chocolate in the finish. A full body offsets the bitterness.
In the nose sweet, round, full, nutty, with hints of something that could be called spice. In the cup pleasantly light-bodied, high-toned, with an elegant balance of acidity and gentle sweetness. Long, bright but smooth finish.
A superb Sulawesi: rich, big-bodied but smooth, with a shimmer of acidity animating its heart. Elegant balance of bitter and sweet tones, fine range from middle to bottom of the profile, a hint of flowers, and deep, dry plum-wine fruitiness.
The rather aggressive roast drives off nuance and sweetness, but the cup stays on the pleasantly pungent side of charred. A twist of acidity, some flowers and a hint of dry, pruny fruit survive the roast.
Classic, clean, complete, elegantly powerful. The acidity sings rather than stings: It is bright yet full-toned and winy. The aftertaste is richly dry without sharpness.
"Yes! This is a coffee for non-believers. This sample will convert the pagans," wrote one reviewer, apparently a supporter of Brazil coffees. Well, most of the pagans stayed unconverted, still groveling about before their acidy Central-American idols. The usual vanilla and nut tones were noted approvingly in the aroma, the soft sweetness of the acidity observed, but little enthusiasm emerged in the categories of body, flavor or aftertaste. "Not much depth," complained one. "Very uniform throughout the range in all taste aspects," remarked another carefully, "not lacking anything in particular, yet not exceeding in any category either." Three reviewers noted mild faults, two with a forest products theme: "papery; wet cardboard," said one; "woody" complained the other.
A decent coffee ruined by a probably avoidable defect. Parts of the bag from which our samples came apparently picked up moisture during storage. Some individual samples (perhaps from the top part of the bag) cupped cleanly and sweetly, but most displayed either a rope-like taste called baggy (cited by five cuppers) or the moldy-basement taste called musty (two cuppers), both defects typically caused by post-processing moisture. Inspection of this coffee revealed more visual defects than displayed by any of the Itzalco coffees in the cupping, which may indicate something additional went wrong before the coffee went into the bag.
Few complaints here, but not much enthusiasm either. At least no one called this coffee ordinary or boring. "Excellent coffee," said one, "although repeated cuppings left me with a feeling of 'something lacking.'" "Doesn't go anywhere," I observed. However, one of the cuppers felt this coffee came "back with a second level of depth; a good, full cup." Perhaps the rest of us weren't patient enough.
Two contributors admired this coffee for its soft sweetness. Everyone else found it commonplace: "A bit flat, though pleasant and inoffensive"; "Okay, nondescript." The most outspoken condemnation: "Flat, dusty, institutional." Curiously, although most cuppers found the taste flat, several cited piquant nuances: herbal, spicy, etc. Perhaps the piquancy suggests the potential of this coffee and the flatness is a weakness caused by rushed fermentation or errors in handling or storage. Support for the latter hypothesis comes from one very specific assessment: "Slightly musty in the cup."
Almost everyone remarked on the paradox of an acidity that read as complex and fruit-toned, yet oddly hard. "Very good taste but not refined, bright and brassy"; "winy but flat"; "sharp yet sweet"; and most succinct: "fruity sour." Several remarked on the perfumes in the aroma and top notes, variously characterizing them as fruity, floral, and winy.
A familiar story: Some like this coffee's soft expansiveness, others found the profile boring. In the affirmative: "wide-bodied and mellow"; in the negative: "dull, lifeless." Four cuppers picked up chocolate notes. The subtle acidity also attracted both support ("bright and fruity"; "brisk") and criticism ("some unpleasant astringency"). My particular sample displayed a marked difference among three cups, with one exhibiting a flat hardness that betrayed the overall sweetness and depth of the other two.
Most of the wallflower coffees near the bottom of the rankings managed to seduce at least one or two of the Cupping Board with their soft sweetness. I fell for this one. I found it light but pleasingly subtle and complex in the upper registers. I wasn't completely alone: "nice, mild coffee"; "smooth"; "nutty, caramelly." But a majority found little interest to offset the light body: "common"; "not very exciting"; "crispy but boring." Furthermore, three found the acidity a little edgy ("a touch sour"; "harsh"; "raw"). Another reported a yeastiness in one of three cups. I understand the characterization of this coffee as common but not the complaints about the acidity. Perhaps this is another case of variation among individual samples.
Sweet-nuanced words like nutty, fruity and caramelly dominated reports on this coffee. "Interesting combination of aspects," said one. I found the acidity a bit hard behind the fruit tones, but almost no one else complained. One cupper alone found a defect: one slightly dirty cup out of (presumably) three.