We’re excited to introduce Kiryama, a beautiful coffee from roughly 3,500 small landowners in Butaganzwa, Kayanza, in North Central Burundi. Kiryama is comprised of Bourbon and Bourbon-derived varietals (Jackson, Mibirizi) that predominate the coffee production in Burundi. The variety, along with the terrior of the area, produces a sweet cup, and the meticulous processing results in a super clean profile.

Kiryama (Burundi)
Plum, blackberry and lavender
Region: Kayanza
Variety: Bourbon, Jackson and Mibirizi

Coffees from Burundi have received much acclaim in recent years. A relatively small country located just south of Rwanda, Burundi’s primary export is coffee production. In the past decade the strides of Burundi in specialty coffee production have been outstanding, and this coffee roasted by Madcap Coffee Co. is no exception. We’ll have Kiryama around for a short time and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

We’re happy to share such a terrific lineup of coffees with you. Fresh crop Colombians are just starting to roll in, and this Galeras was one of our most popular coffees last season. We have two beautiful Ethiopian coffees, Reko and Yukro, boasting sweet lime and lemon notes, respectively. Nelson Moreno and Karinga are two all-around fantastic coffees, with Nelson Moreno being fuller, sweeter and with big chocolate presence, and Karinga with juicy, tropical notes.

We hope you enjoy these coffees as much as we do!

Galeras (Colombia)
Floral, cherry, apricot and tea
Region: Pasto, Nariño
Variety: Caturra and Castillo

This coffee takes its name from Volcán Galeras, an active volcano near the coffee farms in southwest Colombia that comprise Galeras. This is the third season that our roaster, Madcap Coffee, has worked with the small landowners who farm coffee in this community (many farming less that 3 acre lots) and perhaps the finest vintage yet.

Nelson Moreno (Honduras)
Chocolate mousse, marzipan and ripe plum
Region: El Cedral, Santa Barbara
Variety: Pacas, Bourbon and Limpira

Santa Barbara, Honduras, has emerged as a star in specialty coffee in recent years, drawing comparisons in quality and flavor profile to Kenyan coffee. The entire Moreno family grows coffee in this region, and each season cousins, aunts and uncles all band together to help tend to each other’s plots. The coffee is then dried and processed together at their grandpa Pedro’s home.

Reko (Ethiopia)
Sweet lime, cocoa and lemongrass
Region: Kochere
Variety: Heirloom

The Reko mill sits a lofty 2,200 meters above sea level, and processes coffee from small landowners nearby in Kochere. While the process here is similar to other washed Ethiopian coffees, the level of quality and attention to every detail make Reko a standout. The long fermentation, sorting, washing and drying result in a wonderfully bright and clean cup.

Yukro (Ethiopia)
Bright, citrus, berries and black tea
Region: Gera District, Jimma
Variety: Heirloom

While residing in an area of western Ethiopia generally associated with low-quality coffees, the Yukro mill began as a partnership with an NGO named Technoserve. Through this relationship, Technoserve provides the tools needed for the cooperative to improve quality, market their coffee and, ultimately, earn more money for their product. Now in its 7th year, Yukro is producing some of the best coffee in the world.

Karinga (Kenya)
Tropical, sparkling, jasmine and clean
Region: Thika District
Variety: SL 38 and SL 34

The Karinga Factory processes the coffee of nearly 1,000 small lot coffee farmers, and consistently produces some of the most delicious coffees in the world. Part of this success can be attributed to the level of support the factory provides to its member farms, including a full time agronomist who makes regular visits to farms to ensure proper quality standards are met.

Harar is a region in eastern Ethiopia, whose desert landscape is quite different from other larger Ethiopian coffee-producing regions. Though regions like Yirgacheffe and Sidama often dominate the discussion of Ethiopian coffee, Harar holds a special place in coffee lore as the origin of commercial coffee production.

This coffee comes to us from our roasting partners at Madcap Coffee Co., who work directly with Ethiopian coffee exporter Heleanna Georgalis on this Harar selection. Heleanna grew up in Harar and her family operates a dry mill in the area. She purchases the highest grades of Harar coffee off the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, and then separates her purchase further to produce her own Grade 1 Quality from the highest scoring coffees.

On the Mammoth cupping table we’re getting baked apple, cinnamon and mulling spices, hints of raspberry and cranberry, chocolate and butter. As it cools, more of the tart raspberry is revealed, and the body of Harar is syrupy and buttery.

Harar is a natural process coffee (also known as “dry process”), meaning the coffee seed was dried in the sun with its mucilage and cherry still intact. This allows producers in water-scarce regions like Harar to process their coffee. Natural process coffees also tend to have very fruit-forward profiles. We previously wrote a post detailing the differences between natural and washed process coffees, which you can link to here.

Stop by to check our Harar on the pour over bar, or pick up a 12 oz retail bag for your home brewing.

Harar (Ethiopia)
Baked strudel, mulling spice, raspberry and chocolate
Region: East Harar
Variety: Heirloom
Processing: Natural Process

I’m going to start this post with a little word salad: You Le Huang Ye Sheng Puer. What is that? What does it mean? Can I drink it? All important questions that we’ll address in this post. In short, You Le Huang Ye is one of the newest teas on the menu, and, interestingly, one of our oldest as well.

You Le Huang Ye is the name of the tea, which is in the Puer category. If that term – Puer, or Puerh – isn’t immediately familiar to you, that’s okay. Think of it as just another tea type, like Green, Oolong or Black tea. In the simplest terms, Puer is a tea that goes through a fermentation and oxidation phase, which brings about interesting qualities in the cup and allows for prolonged storage and enjoyment of the tea.

We have two terrific examples of Puer tea in the shop right now. You Le Huang Ye is a beautiful Puer that was created in 2014 and has been aging for a couple years. The other Puer on our menu – Yun Wu – was created in 2007. Both of these are Sheng Puer, which is one of two types of Puer, along with Shu Puer.

There are two ways to produce puer: Sheng puer (like You Le Huang Ye) and Shu puer. In either style, the tea begins its life as Puer Mao Cha, which is the raw material used in either Sheng or Shu puer. Puer Mao Cha is made by pan-firing the harvested leaves of the Da Ye Zhong variety, also known as large leaf type. It then follows the processing steps to become Sheng or Shu Puer.

In Sheng Puer, the tea is allowed to naturally ferment and oxidize over time. In Shu Puer, the tea is pile-fermented, a process in which leaves are placed into piles, moisture is added and the pile is occasionally turned for a duration of up to several weeks. In this way Shu mimics the slow maturation of Sheng Puer.

Puer teas are often found pressed into various shapes for storage. Our You Le Huang Ye is pressed as a Bing Cha, in which the leaves are pressed into a flat disk shape. This tea was plucked, blended and pressed by the Feng Wei Yu Gong Tea Factory located in Lincang in Yunnan Province, China. And it comes to us via our tea partners at Jojo Tea in Miami, Florida. The tea was pressed on April 6, 2014, and is relatively young in terms of its potential shelf life. It’s flavor may be enhanced over time, but it is also enjoyed in its current state.

In the cup, You Le Huang Ye has notes of toasted almonds, fig jam, rose petal and tobacco. The profile softens and sweetens with subsequent steeps, and we’ll gladly steep this tea for you in-house up to six times, making You Le Huang Ye one of the best values on our menu. We’re proud to share this tea with you, and to have an opportunity to explore the vast and wonderful world of tea together. Cheers!

Calling all freelancers, telecommuters and digital nomads! Looking for a place to work this Friday? Mammoth Espresso is hosting the November edition of Freelance Friday, a popup workspace for coworking and networking, on Friday, November 25. Come work in a casual environment along with other indie workers, creatives and entrepreneurs, all fueled by Mammoth Espresso.

Freelance Friday
November 25, 9 am – 3 pm
Mammoth Espresso
821 Baronne Street, New Orleans

Anyone is welcomed to be part of this community. Check it out on Friday and get a special Black Friday deal for our freelancing friends – $1 off all drinks purchased for Freelance Friday attendees.

On the web at http://freelancefriday.co
Facebook event at https://www.facebook.com/events/159287481200355/
Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/freelancefridayco
Tweeting at https://twitter.com/freelancecowork
Photoing at https://www.instagram.com/freelancefriday/
FF e-mail list: http://eepurl.com/caRAJ5

Recently we shared one of our favorite black teas with you, our Ruby 18, and the response from our tea friends (and coffee friends, frankly) has been really terrific. So we’re continuing with profiles of several remarkable teas on our current menu, including this feature on Bai Hao Yin Zhen, a lovely white tea that’s steeped in China’s tea history.

But first, a little primer on white tea. What is it, exactly? Think of white tea like that leaf collection you made in your seventh grade science class. When you placed your leaf inside a large book, the moisture slowly left the leaf until the leaf became relatively chemically stable. Once you achieved this withered state, you were able to preserve and examine the leaf collection. That’s a dangerously simplistic way to describe white tea, but I think it helps frame the process.

In tea making, once a tea leaf is plucked it begins to wither, and the chemical components inside the leaf break down and come into contact with oxygen – a process we call oxidation. Over the past few hundred years, tea producers have become quite adept at controlling this withering and oxidation process. In white tea production, leaves are allowed to wither for several days before drying, a long process that develops the tea’s flavor and builds an intense fragrance with leaves that are just slightly oxidized.

Our Bai Hao Yin Zhen is produced by tea masters in China’s Fuding county in the Fujian Province, which is the origin of white tea making. Bai Hao Yin Zhen, also known as White Hair Silver Needle, is a prized white tea that is easily identified by its coat of tiny white “hairs,” which are technically trichomes. The strict plucking standard for this tea is only one bud. As opposed to mature leaves, the buds are jam-packed with glucose, giving Bai Hao Yin Zhen a notably sweet quality.

In this March 2016 harvest of Bai Hao Yin Zhen, look for notes of honeydew, freshly sliced cucumber and a silky body with mellow, honey-like sweetness. This tea comes to us from our friends at Jojo Tea.

The following photos were taken by Michael Tucker. More of his work can be found at mchltckr.com. 

We’re inviting everyone to come out this Thursday night for a special latte art competition at Mammoth Espresso. The competition, known as Thursday Night Throwdown, will pit some of the best baristas in New Orleans head-to-head to test their latte art skills.

It’s a competition, sure, but it’s also celebration of the entire coffee community, so come hang, BYOB and have some fun with us this Thursday, November 17. Signups will begin at 7:30 pm for those competing and the actions starts at 8:30 pm.

Check out this photo recap of our last latte art competition right here: http://mammothespresso.com/mammoth-espresso-latte-art-throwdown/.

We’ll also have the amazing Hot Plate Boyz popping up in our kitchen, so come hungry. A few bucks will get you some of the best grub around, including:

• Candied ham biscuits with candied jalapenos, grilled pineapple and basil
• Pimento mac and cheese with pulled pork and cracklins
• Cornbread dressing with slow roasted turkey and pickled onions

Thursday Night Throwdown is a production of the New Orleans Barista Social Club, of which we’re proud to be a founding supporter. You can learn more about BSC and their events at http://baristasocialclub.com.

Also, a big thanks to our very own Maria Degtiarenko for designing this kick ass galaxy flier.

At Mammoth Espresso, we’re big proponents that the same attention to detail and integrity of our coffee program should translate seamlessly to our tea program. We work diligently to bring you the best teas from renown growers the world over, and strive to create a remarkable experience for you in our shop. We love exploring the world of tea and want to share our enthusiasm with you.

One of our favorite teas right now is Ruby 18, a world-class Taiwanese black tea that’s unlike any black tea we’ve ever had. Ruby 18 boasts a complex, cinnamon-like aroma and has a strong depth of flavor with subtle fruit tones and plenty of sweetness. It finishes with a long, cooling mint quality.

Though it’s known as Ruby 18 through much of the west, this tea also goes by Hong Yu, or “Red Jade.” It was pioneered by the Taiwan Tea Research and Extension Station (or, TRES) and can also be found as TRES 18. It was created by crossing a native Taiwan variety with a Burmese strain of Assam tea. Ruby 18 is now grown by some of the most esteemed tea farmers in Taiwan, notably in the Sun Moon Lake region of Nantou County.

Ruby 18 is one of the most interesting and wonderful teas we’ve found, and truly a unique experience for tea lovers.

Juan Angel is the latest addition to the Mammoth Espresso coffee lineup, and we’re excited to share this beautiful coffee with you. Named for coffee producer Juan Angel Izaguirre, this coffee comes from the Santa Barbara region of Honduras on Juan Angel’s farm, El Cedral.

Our roasting partner, Madcap Coffee Co., has purchased coffee from this farm since 2014, the first time Juan Angel sold directly to a buyer. Since then, Juan Angel has invested in quality and production improvements and grown his capacity. The relationship with Madcap has also grown, and they are now the sold buyer of Juan Angel’s coffee.

On our cupping table, Juan Angel performed exceedingly well. The aroma is reminiscent of freshly baked chocolate cake and chocolate covered cherries. This coffee is clean with a slight cocoa sweetness and a lingering hint of cola. It’s excellent as a hot or iced coffee, and we’ll soon pull it as espresso. And while supplies last we’ve got 12 ounce retail bags for your home brewing needs.