Aged coffee

Sweet Marias specializes in selling coffee roasters and green beans. I’ve been roasting my own for some months now. Fresh-roasted is better, fresher, and less expensive. They also carry a large assortment of carefully graded green beans. They grade coffee the way wine experts grade wine.

One of their more exotic beans has been aged three years.

Sumatra Aged Mandheling (’03 Crop)

Aged coffee, true aged coffee, can be a shock to the system. It is a mixture of pain (initially) and pleasure, later, when the initial shock has worn off. In fact, aged coffee is defective. But then again, so is fruity wine, some people would argue. Good aged coffee, real aged coffee, will have great body, extremely low acidity, smokey notes, woody/oaky flavors, and an intensity of flavor you will either love or hate.

The first sip is indeed a bit jarring, but after your palate adjusts, you can find a unique sweetness, like sweet smoke, aged-oaky notes, heavy body, and a complete lack of acidity … well, very very low acidity. It has a certain mellowness to it that is hard to describe, because the first sip is definitely not mellow and soft.

I’m drinking my first cup of the aged Mandeling now. It has a bit of a bite at first, then is smooth. Different indeed. $6 a lb. for the green beans. Oddly, I discovered it had more of a bite when I added half and half. An unusual coffee indeed.