Wicked Joe (WJ) is a coffee roaster out of Brunswick, Maine. They are admirably dedicated to producing quality, fair trade, certified organic, and bird friendly coffee. From their website the company looks like a nice collective of coffee enthusiasts, who have pretty vast experience in the coffee world, and come from a variety of places in the US. They’ve branded their company with a fun, cartoony art style, and classic New England lingo (hence “Wicked” Joe) in an effort to produce what they like to call, “epic coffee.”
WJ gets a big bonus for their dedication to good business relations. These guys are really careful about how they purchase their beans, which farmers they work with, being certified organic, and environmentally sustainable and friendly. They work with Rainforest Alliance, a cool biodiversity non-profit, and proudly declare their eco and farmer-friendly outlook in their mission statement.
Sumatra is a region of Indonesia which has been producing coffee since the 18th century. Sumatra is known for being grown in nutrient rich, volcanic soil, and after 300 years of growing coffee, it is pretty safe to assume that the good people of the Sumatra region know a little bit about how to grow a mean bean. However, on our end, it is our responsibility as bean heads to represent the best of the quality product in the roasting process. This might be where WJ fails a little, but we’ll talk about that a little later.
WJ’s Sumatra will run you about $8.95 for a twelve ounce bag of whole beans. This is what they have to say about the roast:
Delicate malty aroma, slight sweetness, rich, earthy spices throughout, peppery, nutty, smooth, low acidity, heavy body, syrupy, subtle apricot and cherry notes, dark chocolate finish.
The beans had a medium to medium-dark roast, and were very consistent size and color. They had a sweet earthiness in aroma with hints of maple, and eventually chestnut, once ground. After brewing, the coffee took on a rich cedar color and further nutty, earthy aromas.
At first sip, HBCB wasn’t too impressed. While still at high temperatures, the earthiness tasted more like soil, with a noticeable lack of acidity. We certainly wouldn’t call this a “heavy bodied” coffee, as WJ does, but it is neither unpleasantly thin. The great surprise came as the cup cooled a little bit, and some of the subtler pepper and spice notes had their chance to shine through. A word to the wise: allow this cup to cool slightly before drinking to avoid an unpleasant burnt taste.
The coffee finishes with an unsurprising, yet appropriate bitterness for a coffee of this caliber.
So why should a seemingly qualified roaster produce a product that isn’t particularly spectacular? Well, it turns out that often Sumatra beans get over roasted. Due to the nature of the growing process in this region of the world, the beans take on a lighter color than normal when being roasted, thus roasteries feel the need to roast Sumatra for longer periods of time, darkening their color, but ultimately inhibiting their potential. Perhaps if WJ took them out of the roaster one or two minutes earlier, they could have avoided the mildly burnt taste of the coffee.
All in all, this is still a pretty decent cup of (Wicked?) Joe. It makes for a nice daily coffee – not something you break out after a dinner party with colleagues, but certainly more than enough to get you out of bed and get the kids to school. It makes for a nice morning cup, particularly with its low acidity (easy on an empty stomach), and isn’t nearly as bland as some of the more well-known store-bought brands.
HBCB Verdict: 6.7/10
Pros: Affordable, cool company with good intentions, and innovative branding, low acidity (if you are into that)
Cons: Mildly burnt flavor (especially when at highest temperatures), unimpressive finish, potentially over-roasted beans.
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