Sunday Coffee Klatch with Tanzanian Peaberry

A friend and former coworker who's been enjoying my coffee reviews sent me a couple of bags of unground beans that were a total mystery to me: Tanzanian Peaberry!

But I ground it, I drank it, and here's my review of it!

TANZANIAN PEABERRY

As mentioned above, this drink was even more of a mystery than the Mystery Blend from Bones Coffee that I reviewed a few weeks back. I had no idea what to expect from it.

Looking at the beans, I assume this is a blonde or light roast. Given that this was not one of the many flavored coffees I've been drinking over the past several months, the only aroma that I got from the beans or the ground coffee, whether in the grinder, in the basket of my drip coffee maker, or from the pot as the coffee brewed, was... well, coffee.

But what ended up in my cup was so surprising that this might has well have been a flavored blend. 

I put this Tanzanian Peaberry blend through my now-standard steps of my review process, starting with drinking it black. This was an amazingly smooth coffee that seemed like might have been a flavored blend but isn't. The coffee flavor is there, but it's mellow and sweet, almost as if sweetener of some sort had added. There's also a lemony note that put me in mind of lemon cake. I liked this coffee so much black that I drank half a cup before I added anything to it.

Since this coffee already had a natural sweetness to it, I first tried adding Unsweetened Almond Milk. It blended nicely with the existing flavors. The sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream creamer seemed initially to make this drink too sweet, but when I tried another cup with my usual amount dialed back to just a dash, it worked as well as the Unsweetened Almond Milk. 

At room temperature, this coffee was best with the sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream creamer (when it was just a dash). It also works extremely well when iced, whether with the almond milk or the creamer, or just black. I think I actually prefer it when iced, but I'll have to try a few more pots before I can completely make up my mind, since I thought it was tasty in all modes. (Fortunately, I was gifted with an entire 12-oz. bag of beans, so I have plenty to "work" with!) 

So... what IS Tanzanian Peaberry Coffee?

If you're an unrefined clod like me who just likes to drink the magic bean juice whether it's from a blend made by a boutique roastery, from a bag off the shelf at a grocery store, or from the vending machine down the hall at work, you probably had no idea there even was such as thing as Tanzanian Peaberry coffee was before seeing this post. 

Well, as I discovered by doing a little half-assed research via the Google Machine, coffee is among Tanzania's top ten exports (along with precious metals and cashew nuts, another two of my favorite things). What coffee snobs generally think of as "Tanzanian coffee" is mostly grown on the lower slopes of Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro, and it's considered inferior to the better-known other African export, Kenyan coffee. (I will have to order another bag of Kenyan coffee before I run out of my Tanzanian Peaberry so I can compare the two...)

As for the "peaberry", a coffee plant's fruit usually contains two beans, each of which is flat on one side and rounded on the other, basically forming two halves. However, in about 5% of fruits, there is only a single, round bean, and these are called peaberries. These malformed beans are typically sorted out and used in specially designated roasts, such as the flavor of the week here at Shades of Gray HQ, Tanzanian Peaberry. Since peaberries are rarer than the regular coffee beans, roasters can (and do) charge extra for coffee made exclusively from peaberries. Depending on who you ask, peaberry-based coffee is superior in taste to the regular stuff--some swear this this to be case while others are just as adamant that any perceived differences in taste are just marketing-induced delusions.

 What is the truth about Peaberry coffee? Is it tastier or just more expensive? I have no idea. All I know is that the Tanzanian Peaberry coffee I drank was GREAT, and I'll be grinding and drinking more of it in short order... with thanks to the generous friend who sent the bag o' beans my way!