Intelligentsia is a leading Chicago-area roaster with a Keith Haring-style logo, excellent coffee, and a commitment to quality epitomized by the practice of printing roast dates on coffee packaging. Visit www.intelligentsiacoffee.com or call 888-945-9786 for more info.
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Current Crop Brazils
Brazil is coming up in the world of specialty coffee. It probably always was up in Europe, where Brazil's finest coffees, sweetly rounded and low in acidity, anchored the continent's leading blends. In the United States, however, Brazil was mainly known for producing vast volumes of cheap, mass-processed arabica coffees that found their nameless way into supermarket cans and bottles. Some
Fazenda Vista Alegre Natural Dry
Fazenda Vista Alegre specializes in traditional dry-processed coffee, meaning the beans have been dried inside the coffee fruit, rather than after the fruit residue has been removed, as in the wet process, or after the fruit skin has been removed, as in the pulped natural process. Peaberries result when a single, oval bean develops inside the coffee fruit rather than the usual pair of flat-sided
Oromo Espresso
Intelligentsia is a leading Chicago-area roaster with a Keith Haring-style logo, excellent coffee, and a commitment to quality epitomized by the practice of printing roast dates on coffee packaging. Oromo is one of several Intelligentsia espresso blends. Visit www.intelligentsia.com or call 1-888-945-9786 for more info.
Black Cat Espresso
Intelligentsia is a leading Chicago-area roaster with a Keith Haring-style logo, excellent coffee, and a commitment to quality epitomized by the practice of printing roast dates on coffee packaging. Black Cat is one of several Intelligentsia espresso blends. Visit www.intelligentsiacoffee.com or call 1-888-945-9786 for more info.
Premium Coffee Blends
The upside of blending coffees is the possibility of creating a coffee with more range and complexity than can be displayed by a coffee from a single crop or origin. The downside is the potential loss of idiosyncrasy or distinctiveness, the danger of creating a boring muddle rather than a complex symphony. Although only one of the twelve blends reviewed here struck me as a full-on symphonic
Solstice Blend
Complex and exotic, this moderately dark-roasted blend sits sharply but sweetly on the palate. Intelligentsia is a youthful (founded 1995) but tradition-minded Chicago specialty roaster with bold Keith Haringish graphics and an impressive line of coffees.
The Elves Imperial Breakfast Blend
Good, deep dimension, but little sweetness to support the deeply tart fruit notes. Great for elves with a taste for dry, pungent, dark-roasted coffee. Intelligentsia is a two-store retailer/roaster that has brought a well-modulated version of the West-Coast dark-roasting style to Chicago.
Best Sellers
The coffees that sell best in the American specialty marketplace often are not the same coffees that American specialty coffee professionals (and reviewers) would like to see sell the best. It occurred to me to ask a selection of regional roasters for the coffees their customers prefer, as opposed to the coffees they prefer as professionals. Coffee Review staff members approached six
