Starbucks Burundi Ngozi Reserve coffee is here! I have been to two coffee seminars for this new Reserve offering:
May 18, 2013 – 7th and Pike Starbucks:
On May 18 , 2013, I went to a coffee tasting lead by Coffee-Master-In-Training Amber, at the 7th and Pike Starbucks. There were about five people in attendance (and one of them was another customer who just happened to be curious and wanted to jump in).
The Burundi coffee is an African, wash-processed coffee. I think Starbucks is classifying this coffee as a medium coffee, but it’s a pretty light and mild coffee to me. It has a light body in the mouth, and a clean taste. The aroma has some blackberry notes in it. As to the flavor of the coffee, two of our group commented on it having a little bit of a honey flavor. The thing to know about this coffee is that it has remarkably pronounced black tea flavors to it. There is very little roastiness or roast profile to it, and there’s a lot of origin flavors.
One thing we did was tried the Burundi side by side with brewed Tazo Awake tea. This was ingenuous. The Burundi almost seemed a little astringent side by side with Awake. I recommend giving this a try for a really interesting coffee tasting experience. You can really see how Burundi has overlapping flavors with black tea.
We also tried this coffee with a cinnamon chip scone. I think the scone was supposed to bring out complex cinnamony flavors to the coffee, but to be honest, I thought the scone was a little too over-powering for this coffee.
Burundi is definitely something that is rare and exotic for coffee connoisseurs. Actually, this is exactly what the Reserve program hopes to do: give customers a chance to try the rare and exotic coffees!
Here are just a few more photos:
May 20, 2013 – East Olive Way Starbucks:
I went to a second coffee event for Burundi, held at the East Olive Way Starbucks. Coffee-Master-In-Training Danielle walked us through this event. It was very interesting to try this coffee both Clover brewed, and made via a French press. I often underestimate the powerful difference brew method makes to how a coffee will taste. The Burundi is much spicier and fuller when made with a French press.
We paired the Burundi with the Salted Chocolate Almond bites at Starbucks, and immediately, several people commented that the “salty” aspect of the chocolate bite brought out the “chai” notes of the coffee. I thought that the rich chocolate gave this coffee a little bit of creaminess to it. It still had a fairly clean finish, even when made on a press. One person commented that she really tastes the Burundi in the middle of her mouth. (One of the four steps of a coffee tasting is to “locate.” It’s one step that sometimes gets overlooked, but this is good coffee to keep “locate” in mind, as you try it. Just as a reminder: 1) Smell 2) Slurp 3) Locate and 4) Describe.)
If you get the chance, pick up a bag and carefully read the side of the packaging for the Burundi. It’s very rare for an African coffee to come from a female-dominated and operated coffee farms. Burundi tends to have very small farms, and then farmers bring their coffee cherries to central washing stations organized by coffee trading groups.
This coffee comes to you from a coffee trader named Marie-Chantel Nicahoruru, who coordinates the washing stations, facilitates best coffee growing practices, and operates as the primary coffee trader for about 2,000 very small coffee farms, many of which are indeed owned and operated by women. Marie’s business operations in Burundi are remarkably unique as coffee farming in Africa is strongly a male-dominated business.
Try pairing this coffee with cinnamon, baking spices, and black tea flavors. This can also complement chocolate, as we experienced with the chocolate covered almonds.
Enjoy your coffee, from Marie’s table to yours …
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The flavor of Burundi Ngozi IMO has been very confusing in regards to what I should taste. I do like it, although I wouldn’t call it a Home Run. I would describe more like being on Second Base trying to decide if it’s worth stealing Third.
I have had it twice, and I’m still not tasting the spice, chocolate or nut flavors. Of course I haven’t tried it in a French Press or paired it with anything. I think I would compare the finish to be somewhat black tea like, but I’m not sure. I think this coffee might be better if it were a bit more acidic. I’m also somewhat confused by the body of it. It is described as a Medium like you said Melody, but I find it to be a bit weak to call a medium, but not light enough where it would compare to a blonde. I will have to try it a couple more times and maybe a different way before making up my mind whether I really somewhat like it or not? I know!! My opinion here is as confusing as the coffee is to me.
I was so looking forward to trying the Kona this year. I would love to see how that story goes and how it will end.
This really sounds like one of the Reserves that I don’t need to try.
@Chgo: I agree about the Kona…what’s going on. ???
@Denise – I have a gut feeling, Kona may be DOA. I haven’t heard anything positive about what’s going on. Its very hush hush. I heard it was on hold, then heard they can’t sell it. What that means??? I guess we will find out….. Maybe???
@Denise& @Chgo. – The Burundi felt pretty light-bodied, and a bit thin from the Clover. It’s an exotic coffee sure – very good for part of coffee education, for the experience and training the palate. Rare to have a coffee with so many black tea flavors. But, when all is said and done, I’d jump to the Tanzania first or a few stores still have some sun dried Sidamo – and I love the Sidamo.
As to Kona, I was looking forward to it. I had posted a photo of the packages and beans on the Facebook side of this blog (dig down a little for the Kona photo)
http://www.facebook.com/StarbucksMelody
I don’t know anymore than the initial “stop sale” that Starbucks put on it as they’re rechecking quality. Hawaii is one of the more difficult areas to get good quality coffee from right now because of bug infestations on coffee farms.
I had actually written this whole article including Kona, then depublished it, and wrote it again as above, cutting and pasting from the previous article.
Very nice coffee tastings. Too bad these events are so limited to certain areas and that district managers do not push their stores to do these. I like hearing about the food pairings.
@Melody – I really liked the Sun Dried Sidamo and Sumatra Rasuna, but it is gone now from here. The Tanzania is the only Reserve left on shelves that I really like. The rest are “Meh” as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t want to bring up what we discussed the other day. I wasn’t sure if it was an opinion you didn’t want to share. However it does sound like there is a quality issue going on, and they are perhaps downplaying it. Whatever the issue is, we can only guess. What makes no sense is that they would roast it, package it and ship it to stores before noticing any problem. I know that it’s always possible, but if it’s as simple as just poor quality coffee, I doubt they would have gone that far. So…. It makes me wonder if the bug infestations of Kona has something to do with it? You would think there would have been better quality measures in place before shipping a finished product, if that be the case.
Mel,
I am very happy to see that you posted about this coffee. I brought some in to my store and did a tasting with partners and customers. One thing we noticed is the characteristics of this African coffee are so different from what we have all come to expect from this region. We were somewhat surprised to find this coffee was not juicy and it was extremely spicy like that of Asia coffees. My manager actually argued that he thought it was an Asian coffee. We all picked up on the black tea, but now that you mention chai, I’m starting to notice that as I am sipping on a cup while writing this. I was also going to let you know, I have a bag of the Kona. I just heard about the recall, but I guess I got my hands on some before the stopped selling it. I have yet to open it up though… Cheers!
I
@Chgo and @Melody: I had heard rumors ??? about Kona, similar to above comments. I agree, they spent a lot of time and $$$ on the whole process if it ends up being this possible quality control issue. wow.
and, I know O.T. but am trying to find out whether anyone else (I did not, but know of one) got an email saying “5 stars for any 1lb of coffee”, I think until 5/30? I can’t imagine that would be a ‘reward’ exclusive to certain cards, and yet? anyone???
Melody sorry off topic but I got an email about the star dash promotion that ends on May 30. Different levels of stars- did you get that Denise R? Also, Melody how far are you from that bridge that went down. So sad!
@purple1: the star dash email that I got started (I think) on 5/15, I got the email on 5/16 ? and I think it ends on the 28th. 10 stars = $5.00 and 20 stars = $10.00. That’s what I got. A close friend of mine just got (today) and email about the “receive 5 bonus stars if you buy a lb. before 5/30”. ??? I am thinking, but don’t know, maybe that email went to people who have not either received or signed up for the ‘star dash’ I’m talking about. ?
@Melody: was thinking about you, too, when I heard that bridge story this morning. They kept saying that road (I 5) is one of the busiest in the n.w. ? (I know where the bridge was is not in your county…amazing no more injuries, or worse!)
@Denise -Thanks for checking on me! The bridge is pretty far north of Seattle – Like an hour or a little more? Seeing the photos on the news today was shocking. I cannot imagine how horrifying that would be to be in a car, going off a bridge. How awful! I have actually heard that Washington is known for bad, busy bridges. We have a lot of water, and a lot of old bridges. I remember in last year’s news hearing about a bridge in Tacoma being torn down – at something like 99 years old:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Morgan_Bridge
As to the Kona (and believe me, I am making wild guesses here – I could be wrong), here’s what I imagine happened: Starbucks partnered with a farmer in Hawaii, and bought all of the farm’s Kona to source for their Reserve offerings. Hawaii is known for bug infestation right now. It’s impossible to check every single bean. There are “defect” bags of coffee now and then. One of the most common “defect” kinds of bags of coffee is when a very tiny rock about the size and shape of a coffee bean gets into a batch, gets roasted, and gets packaged into a bag of coffee. Once in a blue moon that can happen.
Probably Starbucks took huge amounts of green beans, in burlap sacks, and threw them in their roasting plant for roasting. And then they began roasting Kona – roasting coffee, confident that it had passed all the quality checks with bag samples.
They likely roasted in stages as the roasters roast some, and then maybe their roasting another coffee, and then come back to Kona.
At some later point, someone opened up a later burlap sack of Kona, and found a bad bag of it – the bug infestation problem causing rotten beans. The one bad bag might be enough to stop all production, and cause a stop sale: because that’s the vigilent thing to do to assure quality.
If Starbucks is smart, they’ll not put the Kona out for sale. Better to be hyper vigilent about quality than not.
Of course, I’ve never been to the Kent Roasting Plant, and I am just making all that up! That’s my wild guess for you!
@Melody – I’m sorry to have taken the thread OT with the Kona. I think it will be a big deal to some customers if it doesn’t end up for sale. I met a customer today who asked where it was.
@Denise – I received both emails over the past couple days, and have never registered for the Dash.
@Chgo – It’s fine to talk about Kona. It’s Starbucks coffee – and it was supposed to be launched this week! I am totally fine with the conversations in this thread. 🙂
Oh, it sounds like a delightful coffee! I’ve love every African coffee that I’ve encountered. What a wonderful, vibrant taste they have!
Also, I wish they had the Cinnamon Chip Scone down here in TX. Maple Oat is a good runner up, though.