Detour Los Rosales Coffee Beans

The finest all-round coffee beans I’ve experienced.

INTRODUCTION

Detour is a coffee roaster in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Started in 2009, the founder Kaelin McCowan visits coffee producers directly in order to create an end-to-end process that meets his very high standards. Having tried a number of their beans, I think Detour is doing something very special. Regardless of bean, there is a consistent abundance of flavour and especially fragrance that I have not experienced from any other roaster in Canada. Whether this is a result of selection, freshness, storage, or roasting, I do not know, but clearly there is something unique happening at Detour.

In addition to having a roastery, Detour has two coffee shops in the Hamilton area. One is in Dundas, Ontario and the other is at the Hamilton airport. I’ve been to the Dundas location a couple times and it’s a delightful experience.

But the star here is their Los Rosales beans. I’ll start the review by saying that Los Rosales is a seasonal offering at Detour and it has been out of stock since May 2021. I have been jealously guarding the remaining beans I have and drinking them only on special occasions. Additionally, I have searched out all other beans I could find from the Los Rosales region of Colombia, 8 bags and counting… None of them come even half as close to the Detour beans. Since Los Rosales is a very small area with a limited number of producers, it seems likely that Detour is doing something special with their process where all others have failed. Or, they have a line on only this bunch of beans from Los Rosales. I don’t know.

I originally found the beans through the Toronto Coffee Club which if you’re a reviewer, or just a completist, is a great way to try a ton of beans without spending a ton of money. I’ve wasted $200 alone in my Los Rosales replacement search.

THE TASTE

First of all, the smell of these beans is something otherworldly. It is so intoxicating that just opening the bag is better than most other coffee. I don’t know what is going on here, but only Field Trip’s Analog Espresso circa spring 2020 has come close to such aromatic robustness. On the smell alone, Los Rosales will be enough to win over most people.

I brew my cups using my standard method. Since I like small amounts of coffee, usually with frothed milk, it’s easy and consistent for tasting as well. 8g of beans to 130g of water is a ratio of 1:16 approximately. On Detour’s tasting notes, they suggest 1:16 ratio so I naturally stumbled on the same.

The first thing you notice upon tasting is the incredible balance. There is no immediate acidity on the tongue, no sharpness. It is a smooth entry which washes over and builds in the mouth, like a melting caramel. Detour characterizes the taste as red grape, brown sugar and papaya. I couldn’t agree more. However, the way you experience these tastes is not as it is written in a list. They are not separate. You have to use your mind to combine each of these three and protract what the mixture is like. Drinking Los Rosales is more like a feeling than an intellectual exercise. It is so bountiful that it shuts down your mental side and the flavour just rolls over and over you.

It’s only upon waiting and enjoying that the slightly acidic, fruity papaya overtone comes out giving it a nice lift before the next sip. And you’re going to want an unlimited number of sips.

Until I was 40 I avoided coffee altogether. My right-hand man at the office hooked me and Los Rosales made me a religious man. This coffee is so good that there are times when the memory of the taste floats into my mind almost as if it is real. It might be illegal. Sometimes I debate whether I should eat dinner or have another Los Rosales.

I’ll finish with a few analogies to try to convey the tone and body of this unique bean. It is the romantic and profound Steinway compared to the precise and intellectual Yamaha. It’s the Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royal Cognac of coffees - so perfectly balanced and rounded that it warms you from the inside out and encourages you to drink the whole bottle shutting your brain off and making your happier and happier. It’s the Herz leather horse-hide duffle bag that begs you to open it and stick your nose inside every time you see it, just for the smell.

CONCLUSION

This coffee is definitely in the 1% of best coffees. If your personal taste lies in the middle-ground with robustness and oodles of flavour and fragrance then I think it is unlikely to ever be surpassed. Alternatively, if you prefer aspects like sharpness, precision, florality, acidity or unusualness, there may be better coffees for you.
Either way, you owe it to yourself if you’re a connoisseur to sample the peak of this genre. I’ll be waiting outside Detour’s head office when they get the next batch in.

PRICE

$16.00 USD

AVAILABILITY

Detour Coffee

THE RATING

10/10 Absolute
10/10 Relative

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