PT's Burundi Kayanza

If form should follow function, then my current bottle of maple syrup is a study in good design. It is a slender flask of glass, slender enough to hold captive in one's breast pocket for the occasional discreet swig. Or, for those as thirsty as I am, not so occasional: pancakes distract, and I prefer my pork savory rather than sweet. Which is all to say that, to my palette, maple syrup is best as a straight shot, no chaser.

PT's Burundi Kayanza therefore seemed like a wise selection, if we can maintain the fiction that feeding my maple syrup habit is in any wise...wise. The cupping notes list maple syrup, tobacco, and raisin. I chuckled at the last two notes. Tobacco, raisin (read: port), and maple syrup. Given my tendency to drink maple syrup as if it were a fine spirit, the tasting notes metonymically coalesce. This is a coffee for the stereotypical gentleman of 19th century British novels.

It was a wise selection. I have tasted this coffee many ways and, were the bag not nearly empty, would happily continue tasting it for another week--a rare thing given the promiscuous tastes of the novel-bound gentlemen whose habits I eerily follow and curiously modify. And with the British connection, hierarchy seems appropriate here.

Right. 

French Press showed this coffee off to best advantage. It was lush, and only here did tobacco and raisin reveal themselves.

As a Kalita Wave paper pourover, the coffee tasted like maple-nut cereal. Drinking it made me feel healthy, an impressive feat for anything or anybody, let alone coffee beans.

As a papered Beehouse, I didn't quite get the fullness that I did from the Kalita, but I got nicer acidity.

Cloth-filtered French Press: I found myself missing, in the romantic sense, the grit. 

Chemex: effete! Fit only for the French.