Black White Roasters - The Future, Banana Fosters
Origins | Tarrazú, Costa Rica | Quindio, Colombia
Producers | Esteban Zamora | Jairo Arcila | Ivan Solis
Process | Mixed
Variety | Various
NOTES | Banana Bread, Creme Brulee, Cinnamon Roll, Boozy Cherry.
The Future has been a beloved staple on our year-round menu for quite awhile now. With it, we have been able to showcase excellence in processing techniques, particularly in regard to anaerobic fermentation. In the past, we have predominantly featured coffees from Colombia in this blend, though lots from Ethiopia, Costa Rica, and Peru have played a part in its conception as well. This year, however, we are shifting our focus away from the individual components of the blend and instead elevating flavor as the guiding principle for each creation.
You've seen several installments of this concept throughout the year, and today's release is the eighth in this flavor-forward series. With it, we sought to recreate the flavor experience from our favorite flambéed dessert: Bananas Foster. Just like its New Orleans-born namesake, this coffee is decadent, boozy, and sweet. Its intensity in flavor mirrors that of the tableside drama afforded to restaurant patrons who order the fiery dessert, but this coffee somehow maintains a remarkable versatility as well -further reminding us of its hot-yet-cold, complex-yet-simple counterpart.
MEET THE PRODUCERS | Today's release is a blend of four coffees from three producers across Costa Rica and Colombia. There are so many interesting and innovative processing concepts working together in this blend, but we'll geek out over those in the section below. Fermentation extraordinaire, Jairo Arcila, is responsible for two of those four components, making up 45% of the blend in total. His banana co-fermented coffee made its way to our cupping table awhile back, and tasting it is what originally inspired us to recreate this confectionary concept! Once the Bananas Foster idea was in place, we couldn't resist including Jairo's rum barrel-aged coffee as well, solidifying so many of those sweet, boozy flavors for which we were searching. Fans of cinnamon co-fermented coffees will likely recognize Esteban Zamora's name, whose cinnamon anaerobic lot makes up 40% of this experiment (and will be released as a single origin offering the week of October 12!). The final contribution comes from a producer whose coffee is being released in tandem with this one: Ivan Solis's intensely impacted Candy Natural Catuai.
TRUST THE PROCESS | There are two co-fermented lots in this blend, making up 70% of the profile in total. Jairo's banana co-ferment and Esteban's cinnamon anaerobic lot each underwent co-fermentation for 3-6 days with their respective processing buddies, and these two coffees are responsible for all of the dessert-driven, banana-forward flavor notes we'll start gushing about below. Additionally, Jairo's rum barrel-aged coffee spent some time fermenting in, well, rum barrels, and featured a delightfully sweet rum flavor that is crucial to the original dish. To add complexity and round out the flavors, we included Ivan's Candy Natural Catuai lot, which underwent four days of anaerobic fermentation alongside mosto from the previous batch of coffee cherries.
TAKE A SIP | Bananas Foster might've been our muse, but this cup of coffee is so decadent, we couldn't limit its flavor profile to only one dessert! All of the notes we expected to experience became intertwined with an intense sweetness: bananas became banana bread, cinnamon morphed into cinnamon rolls, and that flambéed character we hoped to recreate came through as something very reminiscent of crème brûlée. Jairo's rum barrel-aged coffee and Ivan's Candy Natural lot combine forces here to give us additional and delightful note like boozy cherries. The whole experience is intense, full, and funky, but it's also sugary, soul-warming, and surprising. You're in for a real treat - but we don't recommend lighting this one on fire.