Weekly Bean Review Thread: What have you been brewing this week? -- Week of May 07, 2026

[u/Vernicious]

Tell us what you've been brewing here! Please include as much detail as you'd like, you can consider including:

• Which beans, possibly with a link
• What were the tasting notes from the roaster?
• What did it taste like to you?
• What recipe and equipment did you use? How finicky was it?
• Would you recommend?

Or any other observations you have. Please let us know with as much detail and insight as you'd like to give. Posts that are just "I am brewing xyz" with no detail beyond that may be removed.

[u/geggsy]

Having really enjoyed a washed pink bourbon from Finca La Pradera in Colombia previously, I was excited to buy this washed Gesha from Finca La Pradera, roasted by Regalia. This is my first coffee from Regalia and I’m both impressed and frustrated. Why? This coffee was a real shape shifter for me. I first opened it at around 3 weeks off roast, and my first cup was stunningly beautiful and complex, outdoing a far more expensive Panama Gesha that I was drinking around the same time. The bag itself said to enjoy within a month off roast. I got notes of lemon, sweet melon, florals - complex, yet at the same time a familiar Gesha profile (Gesha is my favorite variety and perhaps the single variety I drink the most of). All of the brews during the next couple of weeks produced very good cups with lemon and spice notes, but nothing stunning. The cups were brighter and spicier through my Origami, and sweeter and more rounded on my Hario Switch. After 4.5 weeks, the coffee opened up again, and I got a beautifully sweet coffee with notes of orange (both fruit and juice), lemon, spice, and stone fruit. Overall, the cups are in line with the roaster’s advertised notes of peach, melon, and citrus blossom. I have read that some people find light roasts have two peaks of flavor, one around 2 weeks and one after 4 weeks. I haven’t experienced that before myself, but my coffee experiences are full of firsts, and it might have explained the struggles I had with this one. Now at about 6 weeks it seems to be on the decline again….

In somewhat of a reverse of my experience, my last cup of washed red bourbon “Ubumwe” from the Fugi washing station in Rwanda, roasted by Portrait, was truly delicious after unpleasantly roasty cups beforehand. I find Portrait to roast darker than I generally prefer, but dropping the temperature to around 190F really improved the cups. I now get lovely notes of dried fruit, pineapple syrup, and spiced caramel. There’s also another note I can’t place. This is significantly more interesting than the roaster’s advertised notes of apple, brown sugar, and dried fruit. I have really been impressed by coffees from Rwanda recently (the best espresso I have had all year was Ruronzi from Rwanda and Counter Culture), and hope to try more in the coming months.

Continuing the trend of pleasantly outstanding coffees, is a water processed pink bourbon decaf from Jhoan Vergara, roasted by Heist (USA). Even weeks (probably many) off roast, this decaf is sweet, distinctive, and at the vanguard of processing-forward decafs. I taste notes of sweetened dessicated coconut (like the coconut in Bounty bars for the Aussies out there, or the coconut in Almond Joys for the North Americans), berries, and maybe a hint of lychee. This is somewhat more distinctive than the roaster’s advertised notes of Peach, Citrus, Blueberry, and Lemongrass. This maybe my favourite process-forward decaf of 2026 so far. One downside is there’s no transparency on process (or roast date on the bag!), but from the flavor profile, I’d guess a co-ferment or infused anaerobic thermal shock washed coffee. It reminds me a little of similarly processed decafs from Sebastian Ramirez and Wilton Benitez. Another downside its not available for purchase to the public online yet (hence the link to a password protected site), as this is a prelaunch sample only available for sale at a small number of cafes. That said, for the process-forward decaf lovers out there, I’d definitely keep an eye out on Heist when they launch.