Perc Up
If you have read some of my other reviews you know I love a coffee that I can enjoy at its peak heat through the time that it cools while drinking. Something that lures you in with the smell as you open the bag to measure the beans is one of the best ways to start a morning coffee ritual. Perc delivered this and more with their daily drinker Perc Up.
Let me back up a second, when I first found Perc, something about the brand and the website felt distinctly different than a lot of the other coffee pages and companies I had been sourcing. I couldn't quite place it but I feel like I get a coffee version of Ben & Jerry's from them. The bags are creative and unique and most have personality to them that is often lacking in a bag of coffee that usually sits somewhere visible. It's smart branding in so many ways to have multiple things stand out just a little bit different from everything else in the field. The bag itself is even shaped differently than your average bag, calling attention for people to ask what is that.
Back to the coffee. They list baking spices and toffee, and the description adds sweet orange and brown sugar as tasting notes, all of which are in my wheelhouse and why I was excited to try this bag. The coffee delivered on a smoothness that didn't leave me feeling one note was overpowering another, but rather had the notes working together to give me one of the best cups of coffee I've had at home. The baking spices and toffee note combo always left me with a balanced sip and never tipped over to the realm of “too sweet”. I found myself taking a few extra moments to breathe in the coffee in the morning, the way you do when you find yourself appreciating something. I brewed with my standard setup in my Chemex, 600ml water for 37g of coffee, I also found myself enjoying all phases of the coffee, allowing me to sip in peace and not worry about finishing it before the taste began to change as it cooled.
A small downside to this distinctly different feel is that the brand page and adventurous bags could turn away the standard coffee drinker, thinking it might not be for them. This is why I was most curious about a bag of their daily drinker Perc Up, I wanted to know they could deliver an excellent, drinkable cup of coffee suitable for the morning coffee routine and I couldn't be happier with what they delivered. Perc Up is the Field Leader for Coffee on Recco.
About the Brand & Coffee Specs
Perc is a specialty coffee roaster based in Savannah, Georgia. Philip Brown founded it in 2010 as Panther's Eye Roasting Company, a name taken from a music side project, and the acronym stuck. Brown was a touring musician in Athens who spent years in coffee as a barista, manager and apprentice roaster before he moved to Savannah to start his own roastery. In the early days he roasted alone, delivered bags by bike, sold at the farmers market and hired his parents as his first two employees. Perc has since moved into a bigger roastery, added a team of partners and opened retail cafés, starting in Atlanta, Brown's hometown.
Perc Up is grown at 1,300 to 1,900 meters, and they suggest letting it rest 6 to 8 days after roasting before you brew it. The roast comes in at 68.8 on the Agtron scale. If you haven't seen that number before, Agtron is a way to measure roast color: a machine shines light on the roasted coffee and reads how much bounces back. Higher numbers mean a lighter roast and lower numbers mean a darker one, so 68.8 lands around light to medium (also in my ideal preference range).