Blind Assessment

Unusual taste structure: a candyish sweetness is complicated by a richly sour sensation and a hint of savory depth. The richly and sweetly sourish sensation is most prominent in the acidity. Lightly syrupy, lively mouthfeel. In the aroma and flavor minty chocolate, lavender, a hint of strawberry, plum perhaps. The chocolate note carries into a very sweet, gently tart finish. We deducted one point from our original 91 rating owing to mildly uneven cups.

Notes

In the 1990's a coffee-breeding program was initiated by the Hawaii Agricultural Research Center aimed at creating unique, truly Hawaiian coffee varieties. The Pohihiu variety that composes this sample, a hybrid of the exotic Mokka variety established in Maui and the mainstream Typica, is one of the outcomes from this breeding work. Very little of this variety was produced this crop year and Daylight Mind is one of only two roasters to present this unusual coffee from Oahu’s Waialua Estate. Daylight Mind’s co-founder, coffee scholar Shawn Steiman, has a long and close relationship with Waialua Estate. This sample consists entirely of peaberries, a kind of bean that results when the coffee fruit develops only a single, oval bean rather than the usual pair of flat-sided beans. Peaberries produce a somewhat different (often better) cup than normal beans from the same crop, from which they may or may not be separated during grading. Waialua Estate, located on the North Shore of the island of Oahu, is one of four mechanically harvested farms in Hawai‘i. Visit www.daylightmind.com or call 808.339.7824 for more information.

Who Should Drink It

Curious aficionados and those who value the quietly exotic. We puzzled over the odd sweet/sour/savory structure of this coffee when we cupped it blind. Such complications can be generated by serendipitous accidents of fruit removal and drying. We hope, however, that they are related to botanical variety, since this sample was produced from trees of a rare and unusual hybrid developed by Hawaii-based scientist Chifumi Nagai that combines the distinctive-tasting Mokka variety, probably originally from Yemen or Ethiopia via Brazil, and a sturdy local strain of the classic Typica.

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