August Mystery Reveal - Minmax

It's time to reveal our mystery coffee for August! This was such a tricky mystery, thank you all for joining!

A haiku to start off this reveal, from terebat:

MCL derives
but the reckoning arrives
Who will take the prize

From BK -

First off, as a roastery that launched literally the week prior to this Mystery Coffee League release, I want to thank the US MCL coordinators for taking a chance on me for August’s mystery coffee. To match the spirit of the game, I wanted to choose a coffee that would both be really tricky to guess correctly and accurately represent my roasting style.

This coffee could taste quite different depending on how long it was rested and how it was brewed, and certainly not all of the flavors were positive ones. When underextracted, it could taste quite brown, lacking in acidity and being woody, grainy, and maybe a little vegetal. On the other hand, in most of my brews, I got a strong berry acidity, with some underlying woodiness and some baking spices.

I hope everyone had an interesting time with this coffee. I sure did!

About the farm and the coffee:

From La Bodega, aka Cafe Imports:

Community Select

Part of our stratified buying approach, these community select lots are mostly larger lots of coffee with an elevated profile above our signature coffees. Generally these are blended lots from various producers from a single community in a specific coffee growing region in the world. These lots offer an increased level of traceability and often are a result of small-holder producers banding together in an official or unofficial structure to sell their coffees together. Café Imports is able to blend specific day lots to create a desired profile working closely with these farmers.

Frinsa Collective

The Frinsa Collective is focused around a family-owned estate known as Frinsa, run by Wildan Mustofa. The "collective" refers to the family's purchasing of coffee from neighboring producers for processing and sale from the Finsa Estate. According to green-coffee buyer Piero Cristiani, Wildan and his family are progressive, focusing on experimental processing more than is commonly found in Java. The Collective produces Honeys, Naturals, anaerobic-environment fermentation, and is also separating out single-variety lots. Wildan oversees the agricultural and processing side of the business, while his wife Atieq handles contracts and their son Fikri does the cupping.

The coffee is rinsed, sorted, and depulped the same day it's delivered, and fermented for 18 hours. It's washed to remove the mucilage, then dried on patios for 7–10 days.

If you'd like to order more Minmax, you can do so here: minmax by bk (minmaxcoffee.com)

Statistics

Now onto the top placers!

In first place with 15 points: bermasaurus and SubaBrew!
In second place with 13 points: newdent and J. Gonález!
In third place with 12 points: barsum and brrruuppp!

Thanks to all who guessed! Be sure to guess if you join us for a mystery round. You can still join H&S here: September MCL | H&S Coffee Roasters | Specialty Craft Coffee (hscoffeeroasters.com)!