Two Nalgenes, one Courage Badge, one Boy Scout wallet, one iPhone 3G S, one lined pocket Moleskine, one Retro 1951 medium nib fountain pen.

Kaldi's Coffee offers the fourth-prize-winner from the 2009 Colombia Monserrate competition. Like the "Lo Mejor", this is a very fine coffee. When you get up to this level of quality coffee, most differences come down to personal taste. I've tasted this using two different brewing methods and I'll report on each one.

French press

I brewed the coffee with a dose of 18g coffee to 250ml water for 3'30" and skimming the grinds off the top before pressing. This is a fantastic coffee. It offers an aroma of caramel and spices with flavor notes of lemon and nuts. It's got a milky mouthfeel—not dense, but just enough body to seem substantial. 

Clover

I also had this coffee brewed at Kaldi's downtown Clayton location in the Clover 1s. I'll offer thoughts on the Clover soon. It was brewed with 12 fl. oz. of water, 30g of coffee, for sixty seconds, at two hundred degrees fahrenheit. The mouthfeel from the Clover was much lighter than in the press. As in the press, there was a distinct lemon flavor, but the Clover also brought out a little bit of a black tea, which I didn't get in the press. This was a balanced brew; certainly citrusy and acidic, but there was depth to the flavor too. As the coffee cooled, it became more lemony but it did not get unbalanced.

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I'm a little late with these tasting notes. When I flew back to Saint Louis after Christmas, I accidentally left my scale in Oregon, so I couldn't give these coffees a fair test. I've had both coffees without the scale, but I'll have to wait to buy more of the fourth-place bean before posting tasting notes on those.

Before diving into my tasting notes, I'll describe the brewing process. I preheat a three-cup French press with boiling water. I also preheat my double-wall glass, though preheating the glass is probably unnecessary. The coffee is coarsely ground just before brewing. I use 18g of coffee and 250ml of water, which is poured just off the boil. The coffee steeps for 3'30", at which point I stir the coffee and skim the "foam" off the top before pressing. Mark Prince has a good video on the process.

So, how about these beans? The Lo Mejor is a top-flight coffee. The whole beans offer aromas of bergamot, but when brewed I found that shifted to nutmeg. The mouthfeel is not dense, but still velvety—a well-made cup of hot cocoa comes to mind. It's a bright coffee—I get some citrus notes, but more in the area of a lime than a lemon or an orange (the Kaldi's notes suggest mango, bergamot, and green apple). It finishes with a hint of tobacco.

I've had this coffee for seven days and the tasting notes are based on what I tasted today. Unfortunately, Kaldi's did not put a roasting date on the bag. When it was fresher, it had much more citrus. I like it better now than I did then—at no point would I have characterized it as an unbalanced or unpleasant coffee, but I am not personally a fan of huge citrus notes in coffee. If you love a well-balanced, citrusy brew, you really can't go wrong at $12.80 (including tax) per bag.

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