Guest writer

A friend of mine Steven, wrote a review of one of my favorite Coffees the IMV or Idido Misty Valley. I just had to share this with all of you! Thanks Steve!!!

It was an early fall day, rainy and colder than one would expect at this time of year. After coming back from a work trip that took a lot out of me I was looking forward to a wonderful pot of coffee. I had just the thing. Dennis had roasted up a batch of IMV, and this man has remarkable skill. He seems to know the bean, to understand what it wants in a roast. For we all know that taking a roast a touch too far may bring us a good cup of coffee, but some of the flavors will be gone or will have a faint taste of being burned - very faint, but there, affecting the entire cup. Should the roast run a bit too short and some flavors don't have the chance to introduce themselves to the other flavors in the roast and to the cup one is about to drink. Dennis knows how to get them all to the party.

The first sip is a bit of a trick, for it tastes like a simple cup of quality coffee - the flavor is full, the "coffee" flavor present, a bit of an earthy tone is front and center. But, on the second and slower sip one can taste a multitude of soft flavors that by themselves are very good, but together make up a coffee that is like none other one will have tasted. There is the treasured chocolate flavor of many very good coffees, which in and of itself can be hard to bring out in a coffee, especially one as complex as IMV. And, sitting next to the chocolate is the true taste of a floral bouquet - how is that possible. And, it wouldn't seem they would go together, but they do. I believe it is the other flavors that bring them all together, for a fraction of a second after the floral flavor is a more citrus one, not sour, but the zest of a citrus fruit in a chocolate background.

It doesn't stop there. This roast is not a particularly dark one, and I believe this allows many flavors to come out without one dominating the experience for the taster. As the chocolate subsides I was surprised to taste a true hint of vanilla, another flavor not come by easily in a roast, but here it is in Dennis brew. While not overpowering, there is a sharpness to them, they cut through the "coffee" and earthy tastes, along with a sample of cherry, almost as an afterthought it hides among the other flavors.

I also live in Costa Rica and the coffee reminds me of that, not in the actual coffee, but in the tropical nature of the combined flavors, much like the cornucopia of fruits one would find in our yard down there. The taste lingers sweetly and dissipates with no aftertaste, the palate is cleared for the next sip.

My goal is to work at roasting this coffee to the point where Dennis, himself, would say, "well done." Care goes into this roast, that is obvious. For it would take very little to miss the true "sweet spot." I imagine that there are a number of places to "pull" the roast that would give one a very good cup of coffee, but there is a very small window which would allow so many varied flavors all to have their say without any of them taking command of the cup. This coffee, every sip, is a gift to the senses. Drink on, drink on ...