Honduran Organic

This is the second bag I’ve tried from Gigawatt. The first one sat on the fence between Worth A Try and Take My Money. This one settled higher, and it did it over a few days rather than all at once.

The whole-bean smell was the first nudge. Every morning when I opened the container there was a sweetness that made me pause. The fruity and vanilla notes were already playing in my head before the water ever hit the grounds. That small ritual moment is part of why I drink coffee, and this bag earned it consistently. It wasn’t just intensity. There was a clean sweetness that made the pause feel worthwhile instead of automatic.

I ran it at 25 grams to 400 ml on the Chemex and forced myself to wait a full minute after the brew finished before the first sip. That extra patience is something I carried over from the Costa Rican Tarrazú review. The cup rewarded it. Early cups were pleasant but still finding their balance. By the middle of the bag the vanilla had leveled out as the dominant note for me, with the blueberry fruitiness sitting cleanly underneath. The cola note showed up more as a soft, rounded sweetness than a sharp soda pop. By the time the bag was nearly gone I was looking forward to the morning cup and a little sad to see it end.

A quick note about the air roasting process that Gigawatt uses. Almost all coffee, north of ninety percent of it, is roasted in a drum: the beans tumble against hot metal, which builds body and those familiar caramelized, toasty notes most of us grew up on. Gigawatt goes the other way, with a fluid-bed air roaster, where the beans roast suspended in a column of hot air and never touch a hot surface. It’s an uncommon approach, and the payoff they’re chasing is clarity. That clarity shows up here in the way the sweetness and fruit stay distinct instead of collapsing into a generic medium-roast profile. There’s very little of the dry, roasty edge that can show up in drum-roasted coffees at this level.

As an aside, I’ve been noticing a quiet trend toward medium roasts in the bags I’ve been ranking highest lately. This one fits that pattern. It’s more of a data point than a hard conclusion, but it’s one I’m paying attention to as I keep testing. Curious to see how that continues to play out.

Ultimately the verdict here is a clear Take My Money. The first Gigawatt bag never fully crossed that line for me. This one did, mostly because the aroma ritual and the cup both kept delivering across the life of the bag. A coffee this good is mostly an invitation to keep exploring the rest of Gigawatt’s lineup. There’s still plenty left to try, and I expect more of their coffees will land in the same tier.