Coffee Monday – The Remarkable Bean – Espresso

There is the first week of April gone – have we gone to any Indie Coffee Passport stops in that time? No. Maybe if I keep mentioning it online we will go, but no, we’ve been doing the usual wait for a really caffeinated last-minute  weekend of April.

Over the past week we’ve been enjoying the coffee beans delivered with our weekly Mama Earth Organics order. Mama Earth teamed up with The Remarkable Bean, a coffee shop and roastery at 2242 Queen St. East that I had not been to before yesterday to deliver different roasts of fair trade organic coffees in whole bean or several different grinds, from regular grind, to french press, to espresso grind for their Espresso Roast.

The Remarkable Bean is a family business which has been selling coffee since 1994 out of the Beaches in Toronto. They roast onsite and in public, and all of their coffee is small batch or micro-roasted daily, which is why the nice folks at Mama Earth Organic can deliver freshly roasted (within 2 days before delivery) coffee to my door.

Since we have an espresso machine, I ordered 1/2lbs of Espresso Roast, and later regretted it. That is, I regretted that I didn’t order more. I loved this coffee, and all of its rich flavour notes. This is also their house espresso so if you happen to go in to get a fancy coffee beverage (or just a simple in house espresso), this is the roast you will likely be getting.

The more coffee we’ve started brewing at home, the more flavour variations I’ve become aware of. My favourite part of the Remarkable Bean Espresso was how smooth it was, it had a lovely well balanced flavour and softness. With some dark roasts the acidity seems to be overwhelming, with this coffee I felt like I was drinking something that was “just right”.

The coffee bean in their Espresso coffee hails from the San Pedro region of northwestern Honduras, is fair trade, organic, sustainably grown, and is also strictly high grown (at around 5500 ft.) Why does this high grown factor matter? Well, because coffee beans grown at high altitudes mature more slowly and grow to be harder and denser than coffee beans grown at lower elevations. The resulting consistency and taste of high grown beans makes them more delicious (and almost always more expensive) than coffees grown at lower elevations.

We have a couple more varieties of coffee beans in our house, but I’m looking forward to ordering The Remarkable Bean Espresso roast again soon.

I’ve you’re wondering if you should visit their Cafe in The Beaches, it’s a pretty nice space, and their coffee is excellent. If you’re like me, and order a Mama Earth Organics box, add it to your delivery sometime and let me know what you think. I loved it.

The Remarkable Bean
2242 Queen St. E.