• Roaster: Sun Bear Specialty Coffee Roasters (St. Petersburg, FL)
• Purchase date (both bags): 3/22/2026 from Sun Bear café inside Sans Market, St Petersburg, FL
• Both bags 12oz/340g
• Bag 1:
  • Origin: Ethiopia (Guji, Oromia); Farm: Mr. Girum Girma
  • Roast level: Light
  • Roast date: 3/16/2026
  • Process: Natural; Varietals: Heirloom, Ethiopian Varieties; Altitude: 1500-2000 MASL
  • First cup: 3/22 or 3/23/2026; last cup:
  • Tasting notes: Pecan, jasmine, apricot
• Bag 2:
  • Origin: Peru (Cajamarca); Farm: Women Lima Coffee
  • Roast level: Light
  • Roast date: 3/17/2026
  • Process: Washed; Varietals: Catimor, Caturra, Bourbon, Typica; Altitude: 1600-1900 MASL
  • First cup: 3/23 or 3/24/2026; last cup:
  • Tasting notes: Jasmine, nutmeg, lemon zest
• Pour-over with Ode grinder:
  • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
  • Ode: 5
  • Water at 100°C
  • Size 2 V60
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover, 60g bloom water and 60g pulses. Finishes around 03:30-03:45

I always try to buy some locally-roasted coffee when I’m out of town. There are a bunch of roasters in the greater Tampa/St Petersburg area, but most of the local, non-chain roasters didn’t have retail hours on weekends. Fortunately, I was able to find Sun Bear, which was only 20 minutes from my hotel in light traffic, and had a café inside a small zero-waste grocery store that was open Sundays. They specialize in single-origin light roasts.

Brewing these has been educational. The beans are roasted more lightly than anything else I’ve brewed in recent memory, and are quite dense. I opened the Ethiopia bag first. I like to grind most Ethiopian beans on the finer side (usually with good results), so I started these at Ode setting 2. The grounds took longer than 4 minutes to draw down, and the end result was not very good. There was a little bit of muted fruitiness, but it was dulled by a kind of wooden roasty flavor. I guess now I know what over-extracted light roast coffee tastes like. Yesterday, I backed the grind off to setting 5, which sped the draw-down up by around 30 seconds. It was kind of like taking a veil off: the cup was much brighter and flavor-forward.

Things went similarly with the Peru beans, except I started them at setting 3. The draw-down was a tiny bit faster (it finished at about 4 minutes on the nose), but the result was similar. Actually, initially, I would have been hard-pressed to tell which of these was which. Backing the grind off to setting 5 once again made a big difference, and really brought out the lemon zest flavor.

I may adjust the grind a little bit coarser still with one or both of these, because ideally, I think I’d like them to finish brewing by 03:30. But whatever the case, this has gotten me thinking more about how I approach brewing light roasts. That being said, most beans I’ve bought in the past that are sold as “light roasts”, have been roasted darker than these. Everything is subjective, I guess.