keaton violet

Santa Isabel - Tim Wendelboe

First, let me apologize for my lack of posting this last week. I’ve been super busy and would rather wait until I have enough time to write a well thought out blog post as opposed to just putting something crappy and boring up. I was super excited to be able to try this coffee so please read on! 

Tim Wendelboe is the 2004 World Barista Champion and is also the name of his roasting company, located in the heart of Oslo, Norway. Alongside the roaster is a cafe and an educational center for coffee professionals and the general public. TW is a well respected operation in the world of specialty coffee, so to be able to try his coffee is a real treat, especially because you can’t just order their coffee online. Due to TW’s commitment to freshness, they don’t currently ship overseas. If you’re wondering how I happened to get this coffee that seems so hard to get ahold of, let’s just say it pays to know people who are from Norway and still visit home occasionally. 

The coffee I was lucky enough to get from them was the Santa Isabel. This is the name of the farm in Honduras where the coffee was produced. Read more about it here. I received the coffee about two and a half weeks after it was roasted. I mention this because the standard window of freshness with coffee is about 14 days off roast. Nevertheless, the aroma of the coffee was overwhelming sweet. It was reminiscent of candied lemon and caramel. I finished the bag off rather quickly so as to not let it get too old. My methods of choice for the Santa Isabel were the Aeropress and the Chemex. In the Aeropress this coffee cooled to taste like strawberry lemonade and in the Chemex was tasting like a warm, fresh summer jam. It was one of the finer cups of coffee I’ve had in a while. 

If you’re interested in learning more about coffee, Tim Wendelboe (@timwendelboe) and his roaster Tim Varney (@tcvarney) are awesome guys to follow in the twitter world. Their Flickr account is full of incredible pictures of their trips to origin and all of the awesome work they do with farmers. Their website is a jackpot of cool coffee info as well. Unfortunately, a lot of roasters like to claim things about their coffee being “farm to cup” or “fairer than fair trade” without doing the hard work that it takes to make those things true. It seems like only a few roasters around the globe are putting in the amount of effort at origin as the guys at Tim Wendelboe. Their hard work is greatly appreciated, and I will buy their coffee as often as I can.