Hill Top Farm Cameroon Boyo
Many thanks to all of you who wished us well at our staff party. We had a great time. Ruth and Mariah even made tie-dyed t-shirts celebrating our “Spralter-Q,” in an effort to combine all the seasons into one. Trace, on top of being our roaster, is a great cook, and he whipped up steaks, chicken, macaroni salad, soda jerk beans, tomatoes with burrata, and watermelon for all of us. Doesn’t that sound delicious? I think that my favorite were the tomatoes, picked out of the garden just an hour before. You can check out a collage from the party on our blog here.
This week’s coffee comes from Cameroon, where our employee Kathleen spent a year recently. I queried her about her experiences there, and she related her impressions of the country. She said that it was a beautiful landscape, where everything was “green and huge.” The rainy season lasts seven or eight months, from March to November, and the rest of the time it is dry. She described a culture where the pace is “ten times slower than America,” and where “everything is about relationships.” Even going to the market is about who you see, not about what you get, according to Kathleen.
That’s how we feel about our customers, so maybe it is not completely antithetical half a world away. Our business is about the relationships, about all of you who come in and greet us and choose to buy our product. We also love to explore the relationships between where a coffee is grown and processed and how it gets to us. This Cameroon Boyo has a great website where you can see photos of the farmers growing the coffee, here. These are small farms, which are passively organic, by virtue of pesticides not being used in the region.
There is a series of photos that I especially enjoyed, with a man roasting coffee in a pot over an open flame. That’s this gallery, here, if you would like to see it. It’s appropriately titled “SLOW ROASTING.” This Cameroon Boyo coffee came in the artistically decorated burlap* bag pictured to the right. The care that went into the growing of the coffee is evidenced in the detail on the sack.
Now to the crux of the description: what is this coffee like roasted? Ours is not as dark as the one pictured being roasted on the Cameroon Boyo website. Trace roasted this light, and we immediately brewed a pot for all of us to try. Have you noticed how coffee flavors change as it cools? At first sip, this coffee had nutty floral tones and finished with a bright acidity. About three minutes later it was the citrus flavors that were at the forefront as we tasted. As it cooled even further it became more mellow, and we paired it with milk chocolate for the creamy tones that matched so nicely.
If you enjoy African coffees, I’m sure that you will like this Cameroon Boyo. You can have a cup on us by using the code decorated burlap.* Try it at different temperatures, and tell us what you think. You can leave a comment on our Facebook page here: I’d love to hear your description. Have a great weekend!
–Holly Fike
*Code good for one free 12 ounce cup of Hill Top Farm Cameroon Boyo. Code expires on 9.26.13. Limit one free cup per customer please. Valid only at Carolines Coffee Roasters, 128 S. Auburn Street, Grass Valley, CA. Code/Offer has no cash value.