Java City
Celebes Kalossi
Roaster Location: | Sacramento, California |
Roast Level: | Dark |
Agtron: | 38/40 |
Review Date: | April 1997 |
Aroma: | 6 |
Acidity: | 7 |
Body: | 8 |
Flavor: | 5 |
Blind Assessment
Depending on whether your palate reads the fermented notes as pleasantly fruity or disagreeably cloying, you could love or loath this coffee. If you think you might love it, ignore the rating, which deducts for the ferment. Under the impact of the dark roast the ferment turns lush, almost spicy. Displays the usual Indonesia virtue of solid body.
Notes
A mildly, perhaps pleasantly, fermented coffee that is impeccably roasted. Celebes (island) Kalossi (region and coffee name) are colonial Dutch names; the contemporary equivalents are Sulawesi (island) Toraja (region and coffee). Wet-processed by small growers by hand and rather haphazardly, Celebes (or Sulawesi) often displays
Who Should Drink It
Mavericks sure enough of their own tastes to makes mild ferment a virtue, like the mold on the deliberately rotted grapes that gives French Sauternes their special character. A mildly, perhaps pleasantly, fermented coffee like this one is a cultural conundrum. If some fancy folks in 19th-century France had thought it was a good thing to drink coffee from mildly fermented beans we might well find ourselves considering a coffee like this one a great delicacy. But they didn't and we don't. Ferment aside, the dark yet carbon-free roast of this coffee is impeccable.
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This review originally appeared in the April, 1997 tasting report: The Dark-Roast Controversy