Next up is a roaster that I’ve wanted to try for a while. They’re local to me, but I never really find myself in their area, and they’re earning quite a reputation. Peixoto is based in Chandler, Arizona and they own a family coffee farm in Brazil, so they know a thing or two about coffee. The first of three coffees from them, Kenya Akusi AB, is an SL28 and SL34 washed varietal with tasting notes of rosehips, grapefruit, and honey, and it is an absolute banger.
DISCLAIMER: This coffee is excellent, but it’s not for the classic blend and traditional roast lovers, it is light, bright, sweet, and a bit in your face, but in a very good way.
To me, this coffee showcases about the absolute max of good and desirable acidity in a coffee. And I do think it will probably be too bright for a lot of people, but one of the things that I really appreciated about this coffee was its versatility. I think you can tell a lot about how knowledgeable and skilled a roaster is when dealing with washed single origin coffees; roasting them light enough to showcase their origin flavors, but developed enough to be drinkable, hold up to various brewing methods, and adapt to input in brewing parameters. And this coffee was roasted thoughtfully enough that the acidity could easily be tamed down by increasing the temperature and pushing the extraction tighter, which really pushed it to the flowered honey sweetness end of things. Just as easily, the coffee could be brewed or pulled as espresso in more traditional parameters and deliver a nice sparkling cup of ruby red grapefruit juice!
I brewed this coffee on the V60 at:
- 1 : 16 ratio or 20 gram coffee to 320 grams of water using 203*F water
- 3x coffee weight bloom (60 grams of water), agitated to saturate all grounds, 35 seconds total
- Pour to about 275 grams or so and stir
- Final pour to 320 gram and let draw down for total brew time of around 3:00
This coffee was floral, sparkling, complex, juicy, and with bright acidity that just lingered on the palette.
Such great shots, and the coffee was roasted to a developed enough level that it was very user friendly.
I particularly loved this coffee as espresso, pulling big bright shots that had acidity really cranked to the high end of acceptable. Again, it was easy to slow the extraction down and tame that acidity, but I like the sweetly bright shots at a more traditional 1:2 ratio or 18 grams in to 36 grams out in about 30 seconds. Further proof that this coffee seemed to have a nice developed roast level, I could easily push shots into the 45 gram yield range and 37 seconds and they were still very tasty. This diluted them and made them a bit more palatable, but they didn’t taste watery or weak at all, retaining plenty of sweetness.
I did make a cappuccino with this coffee was well, and it works, but I couldn’t bring myself to make more than one because of just how good this coffee is on its own. If you can’t tell, this might be one of my favorite Kenyan’s I’ve had all year.
Although this cappuccino was good, this coffee is too good on its own to put in milk.
This coffee is normally $20.95 for a 12 ounce bag, though shipping appears to be included, which make coffee of this quality and roasting skill reasonable. By following them on Instagram, I was able to catch a coupon code for 20% off, which made this a decision I’m very happy with. So far, I’m regretting not trying Peixoto sooner since this coffee is proving to be exceptional.