Blog
Find out what's happening around Vienna Coffee Company
To help you with a quick meal, we’ve created a quick Grab n’ Go menu that you can get through our drive thru window.
As always, you can also get our delicious and fresh coffee, tea, and house-made pastries through the drive thru as well.
We kindly ask for no substitutions on the grab n’ go menu items please.
Read More
When we last spoke, I was headed to the US Brewer’s Cup Qualifying event in Nashville. It’s been a whirlwind since then. After placing in the top 15 from the Nashville Qualifier, I had the privilege of competing in the US finals in Costa Mesa, CA February 21-23. It was an incredible experience, and while I didn’t place as well as I had hoped (13th overall), I loved the opportunity to represent my Vienna team, and also to highlight a really special coffee, which is what I really want to talk about.
My coffee was a Gesha varietal from Finca Los Cantares in Panama. It’s called the Dorado Ruisenor, which translated means Golden Nighingale. Back in 1994, Marie Jackie Mercer Vallarino purchased a coffee farm to provide for her family, and for 26 years they have poured their love into Los Cantares. That love and hard work paid off in 2012 when the Golden Nightingale placed first in the Best of Panama. In 2014 it placed second (by decimal points), and it continues to do well (and taste amazing).
There are a few things that make Los Cantares stand out. First, it is located next to Volcan Baru National Park, and is surrounded by lush forest. Second, it is situated next to the Chiriqui Viejo river which, paired with its volcanic proximity, creates a unique microclimate which is perfect for coffee cultivation. Finally, Los Cantares is a bird sanctuary which means it is daily filled with the songs of diverse varieties of birds, including the little nightingale, which in their culture represents the presence of God.
This name, Golden Nightingale, and it’s place in Panamanian lore, really spoke to me and so I crafted my routine in such a way as to compare this coffee with the song of the little bird. The Dorado Ruisenor “sings” over the Los Cantares from the top of the estate. It is a naturally processed coffee. This means that the cherries are selectively harvested when perfectly ripe and then sorted and dried on raised beds in the sun, making its song sweet.
The coffee calls to you first in the aroma, where you are greeted with tropical fruit, warm vanilla, and orange blossom. The flavor of this coffee will sing sweetly when hot with fuji apple, cherry, and chocolate. As it cools, you’ll notice hints of strawberry and lime. The acidity is mainly malic, like an green apple when hot, but becoming more like stone fruit as it cools. The aftertaste is lingering and pleasant and reminiscent of toffee. The body is medium and juicy throughout.
You can enjoy this coffee on our pour over bar for a limited time, brewed up in the Kalita Wave, which I used in my competition routine. The Kalita gave it this particular coffee a rich, even extraction, highlighting it’s sweetness. Stay tuned for more new coffees forthcoming in our Foothills Series!
(Sign up to our newsletter below to know all about the latest coffees!)
Philip Hatter
Director of Coffee and Training
The Bressani family (Gina and Georgio) gave us a tour of their beautiful beneficio (wet coffee mill).
View from outside of the dry mill where they dry some of their coffees through heated air.
They recently got a Brix Meter to test the sugar content of their different varieties of coffee.
Broca is a small insect that damages coffee cherries. They have a strong research and integrated pest management program to try and eliminate this pest. You can tell by the years on the bags how well their program is working! Those are bags of broca collected each year, and each year it gets less and less.
San Jeronimo Miramar not only is a coffee farm, but they also are a dairy and make delicious cheeses. Don't their cows look happy? Look at that lush grass.
They have a strict grafting program where they graft different strains of coffees trees together to create strong and productive trees.
Coffee trees need to have a good amount of pollinators to be productive and the Bressani's really care about the eco-system around the coffee. So they tend bees to help the coffee trees. A fun and sweet bi-product is their tasty honey.
Les Stoneham standing in one of their fields of coffee. Their fields are highly groomed and maintained for the best growing conditions possible. Look how lush those coffee leaves look.
They are constantly researching and developing new types of coffee varieties to see improve their quality as well as replace old coffee trees. In order to do this they have a large nursery full of different varieties including experimental varietals.
They are in the process of growing their vermicomposting (worm composting) facility, and are hoping to create more and more compost to use on their trees for fertilizer. The cascara (the pulp) from the coffee cherries plus the manure from the cows make tasty food for the worms to turn into "black gold."
We have had the privilege of working with this wonderful family and their workers since 2013 while visiting their farm in Atitlan, Guatemala. With pristine facilities and their passion for sustainability and research, their farm is a site to see! Not only do they produce our delicious San Jeronimo coffee, but they are also a dairy farm that makes cheese sold throughout Guatemala. Take a peek through our photos and see just a taste of what this farm has to offer.
We also encourage you to buy a bag today and taste this coffee with notes of Black Tea, Dark Chocolate, and Caramel. You can also follow them on instagram. They often post great photos from their farm.
Though decaf coffee may sound like an oxymoron, it is a great alternative for those who can’t have caffeine and those who want a cup of coffee but still want to sleep at night. But how exactly do you make coffee decaf? Your mind may first go to chemicals, which is one way to do it, but that is not the way we do it.
At Vienna we use a method called Swiss Water Process. The Swiss water process consists of two ingredients: Water and coffee. That’s it!
Here’s how it works:
Green (unroasted) coffee beans are soaked in hot water. The water draws out both the coffee flavor, and caffeine (coffee compounds). These bean are discarded and the water is ran through a filter that removes only the caffeine and leaves the coffee flavor compounds..
New green coffee beans are put into the coffee-saturated and caffeine free water. Since the water is saturated with coffee flavor, only the caffeine is drawn out of the beans. The beans are then roasted, ground, brewed, and enjoyed by you.
Though it sounds too simple to be true, this process actually removed 99.9% of the caffeine without using any chemicals! And, it doesn’t alter the flavor of the beans at all. Win-Win!
Here is a video that explains the process a little more in-depth.
