Bajawa Flores: Travelers Subscription April 2025

April 11, 2025

Bajawa Flores

Dose: 20 g

Ratio: 1:17

Grind: Neutral

Lab Grind: 7.0

Brew Time: 3:20

TDS: 1.39%

Extraction: 20.5%

Sensory Description:

A well-dialed cup of Bajawa Flores reminds me of a breakfast pastry – a sweet, full-bodied coffee with notes of maple syrup, caramel, raisins, and cacao. Being a washed coffee, the cup will present with a degree of clarity that might be unfamiliar compared to other Indonesian coffees you’ve sampled. While not exceptionally bright in its acidity, there’s a liveliness that complements the sweetness well. Rather than fresh grapes, you’ll experience something closer to raisins. Furthermore, maple syrup is a complex type of sweetness, not the single-note of sugar, boosting the intrigue of the cup. In summary, your cup should taste complex, sweet, and syrupy with a smooth finish.

Dial Notes:

Under-extraction negates a lot of the syrupy sweetness and full-bodied nature of Bajawa, making it come across as relatively thin. It also accentuates the acidity, making the cup taste more similar to a fresh green grape than the mellower raisin tasting note. The sweetness also does not linger on the aftertaste, and the cacao note becomes subtle to imperceptible.

Bajawa is actually quite forgiving of over-extraction, but it does miss a degree of the complex sweetness you would expect from maple syrup and raisins. So if your cup is sweet, but doesn’t have much depth to its sweetness, you might need to make an adjustment coarser. Over-extraction presents as a simple sweetness with a drying and slightly bitter aftertaste, similar to tasting cocoa powder by itself.