Lavanta Coffee Roasters Guatemala SHB Direct Trade Coffee, Green, 2 lb

UPDATE: after allowing some of the coffee roasted with the Nesco roaster to sit for a few weeks in an airtight container (while I enjoyed some different coffee), a funny thing happened that I wasn't expecting and have never experienced before: the coffee got better. Dramatically so. So much so that I really enjoyed it. Maybe this "aging" process is something that frequently occurs but that I've just never read about, but whatever occurred, it ended up taking fantastic.That earns a swift and well deserved upgrade from 2 stars to 5!ORIGINAL REVIEW: I've been slowly getting into home coffee roasting after a friend with a Nesco home roaster let me sample several of the coffee's he's done, which he's purchased on Amazon from Lavanta. A Kenya blend he had was simply outstanding and sold me that home roasting was something I had to try.Traditionally, I've always liked Sumatra medium/dark roasts. I purchased Sumatra Peaberry as a way to roast something I was already familiar with from many other coffee companies, hopefully to give me a baseline of how Lavanta's coffee measured up.I started with an air popper (ghetto garage style) after reading many online reviews, tutorials, and opinions on this process. The roasting process was simple and the beans roasted beautifully. I turned off the popper right as 2C started, and immediately cooled them down to stop the roasting process. Waited 24 hours for them to off-gas and then got ready to try it. The beans smelled great. I used my hand-crank burr grinder to grind them for my AeroPress and the grounds smelled great. I made it in the usual manner and they bloomed right up - or even more so than I expected. First sips were decent, but really didn't blow me away. I finished my cup with mixed feelings, but just figured I could adjust the roast for the next batch.The next day I went to make another cup of coffee with the same fresh roasted Sumatra Peaberry, and I don't know what happened in the beans, but I literally couldn't finish the cup. It tasted very ashy, and almost...sour?I tried a couple of other batches of roasts and never had the same experience with it tasting "sour", but never achieved anything other than average-at-best 7-Eleven mini mart style coffee. I had about 1/2 pound left and asked my friend with the Nesco roaster to roast up the last of it so that I could at least compare THAT roast against my air popper roast(s). It was marginally better, but not dramatically at all.What I thought might have been the result of the ghetto air popper roasting process, I think actually was the batch of beans I had. I don't know if it was the Peaberry beans, or if it's their Sumatra blends in general. I'm not going to give up and want to try at least two other roasts before I give up on Lavanta, but for what it's worth, their Sumatra Peaberry isn't ever worth purchasing again if it continues to taste like that.

If you live near a coffee roaster you can do better than this. I used to before I moved to a very rural area and there are no roasters within 100 miles of me. But if you can order this with free shipping it is the same price you'd pay if you drove to a roaster - not bad for not leaving your house!Some of the critical reviews state they did not receive true peaberry. From the criticisms I learned peaberry is not a varietal like I always thought it was but a naturally occurring morphology when the coffee cherry develops with one bean instead of two (apparently this happens in all coffee varietals around 5-10% of the time). So I have no idea what varietal from Tanzania this is, but it's quite good!Peaberries have to be picked out by hand so they're usually more expensive than the non-peaberry version of the same bean. Yet this is one of the more inexpensive Lavanta offerings. And it definitely contains SOME regular beans, I'd guess 2-3%. But considering how much effort goes into sorting, I can't complain!I always roast as light as I can once the bean flavors (NOT the roast flavor) become prominent. We've been roasting these (in our hot air popper) on average 1:20 after the first crack. We only make pour over with a reusable filter. Delicious. Smooth, earthy, very slightly sweet. Low acidity. This is the only Lavanta offering we've tried (and got it twice we liked it so much).With a nearby roaster you can explore organic and fair trade versions of their single origin coffees. We don't have that luxury anymore, but we are very happy with this. We're definitely planning on trying their Sumatra Mandheling and Ethiopean Yirggechefe next!

I love Peaberry, and with a simple phone call... they convinced me to try this Sumatra Peaverry. Lavanta's coffee is worth the time and effort to roast it yourself. I timed my first crack at about 7.5 minutes, setting of 4 on my electric burner and a Whirly-Pop. Two turns per second... and yes, manually, and tilting and tapping about every 20 seconds so that beans don't get stuck under the agitator. After first crack, that's not an issue and doesn't need to be done. Second crack started at about 12.5 minutes. I immediately removed it from the heat then, placed them a colander, and then went outside with a fan so that I could pour from the colander to a metal strainer to remove the chaff. A minute later, it was resting on the counter, an hour later it was in a lightly lidded container, and the next morning it was in a mason jar. I let it sit for 5 day for the best flavor. Next day is okay, 3rd day is considerably better, but day 5 until gone (a couple of days later), is the best. When you see "beads of oily sweat" on the outside of the bean, that's when I found the best flavor for this peaberry. Day 3 had a little bit of sweat, but day 5 was spot on.

I have yet to make a cup with this but it was clean, toasted up nice, and smell is excellent. Usually if it smells good I get a good cup of coffee. I was amazed at the promptness. Use by date seems to show they packaged it the day it was shipped. I "roast" mine in an iron frying pan. Caveman style but it works fairly well for me.Okay I have made a cup and shared with my sister. We both like it. Ordered a second bag. It quickly overtook the south american coffees in my cupboard. Smoother and easy on my stomach. I see people having roaster issues maybe because these are smallish beans. My trusty iron frying pan has no such issues. Roasted just until they cracked and tried not to get it to dark.

Home roaster. Pea berry what can I say, rotates evenly, easy to roast. Takes a shorter time. I find darker roast is where the taste profile is best.

wonderful aroma with fragrant chocolaty taste.

Really fresh (years from expiry) and flavoursome once roasted. Message me for temp, timing, and tips.

Very disappointing.