Peaberry Reviews
We found 117 reviews for Peaberry. The reviews below appear in reverse chronological order by review date. Older reviews may no longer accurately reflect current versions of the same coffee.
Understated but quietly distinctive. The aroma is round, caramelly and (quite literally) buttery; patience may turn up little cedar and chocolate revelations as well. The butter and caramel notes carry into the cup, where the fruity chocolate intensifies. The short finish is deep, sweet and rich; a memory of chocolate resurfaces in the long.
Sweet, low-toned, deep, to turn metaphorical, a quiet, smiling, radiant coffee. In the aroma caramel and peach-toned fruit. The peach notes carry into the cup, joined by exhilarating suggestions of flowers and a hint of chocolate. The chocolate turns more explicit in the fine, rich finish.
This coffee displayed a very slight "old crop" (faded, musty-mildew) character that caused co-cupper Christy Thorns to drop her score to 86. Ken (90) felt this shadow defect hardly mattered, however, given the cup's "almost effervescent delicacy, with tickles of sweet cocoa, pipe-tobacco and caramel." Christy offered a similar reading of the cup, but with less enthusiasm: "Although a hint of mustiness somewhat masks the sweetness of the cup, tobacco, cedar and black pepper give this coffee some charm."
Opens with a very sweet, very intense but balanced aroma complicated by apples and flowers. In the cup the gentle acidity subordinates itself to a melodic sweetness and a rich, deeply dimensioned chocolate- and apple-toned fruit. Lyric and seductive.
The aroma is high-toned but pungent, laced with caramel, cantaloupe and leather. In the cup a sweet, wine-toned fruit leads, with richly malty, bracingly bitter tones opening up behind. The bitterness dissolves in the long, clean, chocolate-toned finish.
Variants on citrus shimmer through this buoyant, sweetly acidy cup: lemon and cocoa in the aroma, lemon and pink grapefruit in the cup. The finish is sweetly tart.
A delicate acidity is gently rounded though not obscured by a marvelously tactful dark roast, which also turns the fruit richly chocolate-toned. The chocolate nuance weaves through the profile consistently from aroma through finish.
Splendid aroma: voluptuously rich, chocolaty and perfectly balanced. In the cup deeply dimensioned with a pruny dry fruit edging toward chocolate, but marred by a slight but pervasive bitterness.
Sweet, opulently chocolate-toned fruit is turned pleasantly bittersweet by the roast. Full bodied and roundly pungent.
Full yet majestically buoyant. The aroma soars with sweet nut notes, the cup glistens with fruit and flowers, the entire impression is gentle but enormous. The finish is aggressively dry but saved from astringency by rich cocoa tones.
Superb aroma: rich, acidy, alive with nut and vanilla overtones. In the cup less range but still pleasingly high-toned: acidy, buoyant, and bright with hints of flowers and fruit.
I liked this coffee. For me it displayed the typical strength of fine Kenyas: clean, bright, berry-nuanced fruit and tremendous dimension. Most of the panelists didn't taste it that way. They found the acidity a touch too astringent, particularly in aftertaste. One eloquently sat the fence: "good berry flavors, a 'juicy' cup, [but] finish a bit astringent. Needs balance." A darker roast might help achieve that balance by softening the acidity.
Considerable dry-chocolate intrigue behind the dark-roast pungency. The aroma is extraordinary: light and buoyant with sweet vanilla-chocolate notes and a hint of nut. Settles down in the cup, where the pungency turns the chocolate tones pleasantly dry and smoky.
Judging by their comments, this Old Tavern Jamaica Blue Mountain peaberry was the clear favorite of the majority of the panelists, although they assigned slightly higher numbers for some cupping categories to the regular-bean Old Tavern also reviewed. Descriptions for this peaberry suggest a brightly yet sweetly acidy coffee, with floral high notes, full body, and good dimension. Some reviewers gushed ("Packs a punch! Love it"; "The nicest coffee of this Caribbean cupping. An outstanding flavor"); others simply approved or ho-hummed as they did with all of these coffees. I didn't pick up the hint of storage-related flatness that muted the regular-bean Old Tavern, although some reviewers did, groping to describe it with terms like "faded" and the like. I contributed some help to Alex Twyman, the farmer who developed the Old Tavern coffees, so my own assessment may be suspect, but on the basis of two rounds of rigorously blind cupping I agree strongly with the yea-sayers. I found this a clean, vibrant, subtly complete coffee.
Comments on this coffee focused almost exclusively on the issue of roast: This particular sample was roasted considerably darker than the other samples in the cupping. This dark style, atypical for cupping purposes, was deliberate: The very experienced Coffee Review roaster concluded that this coffee came across best at a darker roast. However, six of eight panelists complained that the roast was too dark to permit fair evaluation. For this reason we are not publishing a rating for this coffee. The sample certainly was clean and free of defect. Whether it manifested enough power to stand up to a darker roast is another question.
The majority of panelists who had something to say about this coffee described still another classic Kona: a gentle acidity simultaneously sweet and bright, medium body, soft, balanced cup, clean aftertaste. Fewer grace notes were ascribed to this coffee than to some of the other mid-rated Konas, although this didn't dampen one panelist's ingenuity, who described the aroma as "donuts, [or] fresh-baked sponge-cake." Two dissenting panelists found fault with this coffee, both describing hard tones surfacing in aroma and aftertaste. On the other hand, several went out of their way to describe the aftertaste as "clean."
This Kauai peaberry cupped clean for most panelists, although three found a touch of herby or earthy hardness. The main complaint was lack of power: "mellow, well-balanced, [but] almost bland"; "flavor -- still waiting." Five of twelve panelists used the "bland" word. Nevertheless, several identified positive grace notes. "Dark chocolate overtones and very dry," said one.