GRINGO vs BEAN BROS FEBRUARI 2022
Welcome to the February Bean Bros subscription box! This month we feature a new roaster for us, from tasting their coffee we were certain this would make for a great box for you! Based in Sweden with a real passion for coffee we bring you Gringo Nordic!
Johan was kind enough to share a lot of detail with us about Gringo and the coffees featured this month. We have provided an edited version for you here to read, but please go online where you can find more details, including brew recommendations for each coffee.
Please tell us a little about the team and your passion for the industry…
Gringo Nordic was founded in 2018 and we are now 6 gringos in the company. My personal passion for coffee started much earlier as I was roasting coffee at home already when I was at University in the early 90s. This lead me finally to establish the Roastery Johan & Nyström in 2004, a company I sold and left in 2015.
I truly love roasting coffee. With Gringo it has been a journey to get back to the first love of coffee, and I am thankful that I am in many ways back where I started. Every day that I get to work in this fast moving industry is a true blessing.
Is there a story behind your bag design?
I think maps are a trip for the mind, and because coffee is such a global product, I thought that a bag with a “complete map of everything” is just the perfect thing.
What are your main goals in selecting and roasting coffee?
I want the coffees we buy to be illustrative of where they come from, how they are grown and how they are processed. I personally like distinct coffees, from very delicate to very fruity.
I like to think that each coffee has its own integrity, and it is my job as a roaster to respect that by roasting to where their personality comes through in the most positive way.
With so many great roasters in Sweden, is this a collaborative industry or competitive?
I think that most speciality coffee roasters are true coffee lovers by heart, each roasters ́ passion is to roast great coffees first and foremost. In that we have a common goal, to roast for greatness and to teach the consumer just how good a cup of coffee can taste. I think we are more collaborative than competitive. But it is of course competitive, as it should be, you need to stay on your toes to be better tomorrow than yesterday, it should be a challenge to roast specialty coffee!
And finally…
We at Gringo hope that you will enjoy these coffees as much as we do, we have carefully chosen them, they come from fine producers that work hard to produce as fine a coffee they can and we have tried to roast them in the best way possible.
Cheers from Gringo Nordic, through me, Johan Ekfeldt.
THE COFFEES
HONDURAS EL MATAZANO WHITE HONEY
Producer: José Elías Santos Mancía
Farm: Finca El Matazano
Varietal: Pacas and some IH-café90
Process: White Honey
Tasting notes: Honey, citric, caramel, peach, peachy aftertaste
The El Matazano White Honey has a very gentle and balanced sweetness. A coffee to drink cup after cup and never get tired of; bright, smooth and quite delicate.
KENYA GACHENGE ESTATE
Washing Station: Kirinyaga FW
Farm: Gachenge Estate
Region/town: Kirinyaga, Central Kenya Varietal: SL28, SL34
Processing: Fully washed
Tasting notes: Red grape, strawberry, sweet citrus, cocoa, black berries.
The Gachenge is one of this years favourite coffees from Kenya. What I like about this coffee is that it is all packed with very powerful fruit flavours, both strawberry, certainly some black currants, and also that juicy sweet citrus that makes Kenya stick out on every cupping table.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA - GRASS ROOTS NATURAL
Wet Mill: Grass Roots
Region/town: Kuli Gap, Western Highland Province Varietal: Typica, Arusha, Bourbon
Processing: Natural
Tasting notes: mango, papaya, passion fruit, pineapple, lime, carrot juice, icewine
Indonesia has been left out from the specialty coffee chain for quite some time, simply because the qualities have been uneven and erratic. But the last two years things have started to happen and true specialty coffees have started to be produced in both Papua New Guinea and Sumatra. And this coffee is certainly one of them.
We truly love this coffee, It is like a bowl of tropical fruits; very sweet, already in the aroma you can sense all the fruity flavours.
