Gala Apple • Brown Sugar • Almond • Juicy

Origin: Kirinyaga | Process: Washed | Soil: Red Volcanic

The Three of Hearts arrives with Kenya Gakuyu AA—a coffee grown in red volcanic soil, washed at the Gakuyu wet mill, hand-sorted like precious gems, and confidently carrying Kenya’s signature AA profile. This is a bean that stands tall and makes direct eye contact.

Opening the Bag: Trail Mix, But With a Degree

The aroma is bright and sweet with a nutty backbone. Not “almond extract” nutty—more like trail mix that decided to get its life together. Apple doesn’t show up yet, but brown sugar’s definitely in the room, quietly humming.

You wisely avoided yesterday’s grind fiasco and started at –2. Good call. First shot: solid. Respectable. Encouraging enough that you nudged the grinder to –3, where things truly snapped into place.

Dialing In: –3 Knows What It’s About

At –3, your machine finally relaxed. Smooth pressure ramp, dark consistent stream, crema behaving like it paid rent on time. The exact kind of pour that makes you nod like you’re approving a contractor’s work.

The bag gave you just enough for your signature workflow: big iced Americano for the desert, plus a proper hot espresso to taste the pure profile. Whoever portioned these bags understands the lifestyle.

Tasting the Hot Shot: Jelly-Sweet and Clean

The hot espresso surprised you—it was much sweeter than the aroma let on. Not candy sweet, but zero-sugar raspberry jam sweet. Sweet at the front, clean at the finish, with a little tart ripple through the middle.

Kenyan acidity is usually sharp and shiny, but this one works more like a gradient. Smooth transitions. No flavor jump-scares.

The Iced Americano: Tart, Nutty, Bright

Cold water woke everything up. Tartness became clearer. Almond hints stood out a bit more. The whole thing felt juicier—not in a “this tastes like juice” way, but in a “this doesn’t dry your mouth out at all” way.

The finish went crisp and clean, leaving nothing heavy behind. A very polite exit.

Verdict

A wonderfully structured Kenyan cup: bright, lightly tart, subtly nutty, kiss-of-jam sweet, and sparkling clean. If Day 2 was a warm fall afternoon, Day 3 is a crisp mountain morning with sun hitting an orchard.

A stellar brew.