Milton Made: Peru Femenino Chanchamayo: With Cigar Pairing notes.

Johnny from Milton Made Coffee sent me a few more samples to review this week. Milton Made Coffee is a small batch roasting company that produces top-of-the-line small batch coffees from organic beans. This selection is the Femenino Chanchamayo, from Peru. The picture below does not really do the beans justice. They are a medium dark roast and many off the beans have spots of oil on them. This batch looks great.

Once the bag was open the pre grind aromas were toast, nuts and chocolate. After grinding the nuttiness of the beans became the prominent aroma. By then my water was boiling so I poured beans into the press and filled it with boiling water. The aroma from the steeping coffee was very robust and toast became top aroma. I love great coffee and couldn't wait to get this brew cupped. After waiting a bit over five minutes the coffee was ready so here we go!

After the first cup full was poured the first things I noticed were the oils sitting on top of the coffee and the great toast aroma rising from the cup. On a normal day I use around a half teaspoon of sugar per cup of coffee, but I didn't want to taint the flavor so I left it black. The first sip was very hot but the coffee was bright and crisp with a nice sweet nutty flavor and aftertaste. A couple of sips into the cup another flavor began to appear. It took several minutes to figure out exactly what it was, but what ever it was, it was good. Once it hit me, I was shocked that I found this flavor in a cup of coffee. To my amazement I had decided it was beef, this coffee had underlying flavor notes of beef!

With each cup the coffee became more robust and lost some of the brightness, but it was still crisp and flavorful. I found absolutely no acid, bitterness or bite and after three cups, the coffee left a sweet aftertaste that lasted for quite some time.

Like always I am impressed with the quality of coffee's produced by Milton Made Coffee and I am actually boiling water for another pot that I will pair with a nice maduro cigar! I don't yet have a rating system for coffee, but I do strongly recommend this roast and it can be purchased at http://shop.clubleafandbean.com/categories/coffee.html.

Pairing notes: I chose a Fighting Cock cigar with a habano wrapper with the idea that the cigar and the coffee would complement each other. Boy was I wrong. The cigar and the coffee were in stark contrast to each other, but they ended up being what I think was a perfect pair! The coffee brought out the milder nuances of the cigar and the mild cigar brought out the bolder complexities of the coffee. I had wondered before hand if a mild cigar would change the flavors of the coffee but it didn't. The mild cigar heightened the bolder flavors in the coffee.

Overall the pairing was a success and I had the opportunity to enjoy a great cup of coffee and I nice cigar!