Weekly Reviews On Friday★Honest Tasting Notes★Weekly Reviews On Friday★Honest Tasting Notes★Weekly Reviews On Friday★Honest Tasting Notes★Weekly Reviews On Friday★Honest Tasting Notes★Weekly Reviews On Friday★Honest Tasting Notes★Weekly Reviews On Friday★Honest Tasting Notes★

Nova

Balanced, light roast coffee that was good in a pour over and was excellent in a french press.

☕
Est. 2026 · Reviewed by André
Nova
Balanced, light roast coffee that was good in a pour over and was excellent in a french press.
Tasting Notes Strawberry wafers, orange
RegionRwanda | Gicumbi
Roast
VarietalArabica
ProcessNatural

The Experience

I was really excited to try this coffee; I had heard of Boon Boona/ seen them on the internet well before I started this blog. I first tried this as a single cup pour over and found it very tasty. I perceived the strawberry wafer flavor as the cup cooled, a balanced earthiness throughout, and some subtle citrus in the cup with a low aciditiy. When I prepared this coffee in a french press, I enjoyed it the most. The coffee still tasted like a light roast, but I think the flavor was more rounded (and definitely not flat). I still precieved the same flavors, but preparing it in the french press delivered some amplified flavors of berry and citrus while still maintaining it's profile of sweet, citrus, and earthy flavors. I really enjoyed this coffee and I think it would make for a great daily sipper.

Preparation Method & Grind Settings

I ground this on a medium coarse setting for pour overs and a coarse setting for french press.

Attributes
André's palate · relative intensity, not a grade
Acidity
LowHigh
Body
LowHigh
Aftertaste
ShortLong
AromaSweet cream, sugar wafers, orange, brown sugar. Addition of strawberry after grinding.

Crafted by…

BB
Roaster Boon Boona Coffee

Boon Boona is a Black owned roaster based out of Seattle, WA region.

Buy from Boon Boona Coffee →

The Current

A few years back I was racking my brain about hobbies – I was looking for an outlet outside of work and survival. I live in a rural area that doesn’t have a ton of third spaces available, and the ones that exist require getting in a car and driving the better part of an hour to reach what most would consider civilization. Growing up, and into my adulthood I had several hobbies that included performing and playing music and doing just about anything outdoors. When I got into the "production mode” phase of life – the phase when life was at my neck requiring me to get it together immediately – hobbies got pushed to the back burner and were nearly off the range altogether. At some point life stabilized and my hobbies returned incrementally, and ironically they returned when I stopped seeking them. During that aforementioned “production mode” phase (which, in many ways, I’m still in) I found my hobbies to be stuff that I once enjoyed, and was revisiting again. Cooking became fun - coffee included, exercising to a reasonable degree was/ is too. Hobbies are the things that allow us to “nerd out” over the things we like, but don’t necessarily have to do. It’s positive escapism and can help us hone skills that we’d like to incorporate into our personal lives and research topics that we actually care about - not just what others say we should care about. It’s literally whatever one likes to do. I’m usually pretty surprised by what other folks have as hobbies and I think the topic makes for a much more intriguing conversation than simply asking, “What do you do for a living?”(more on this in a bit). Asking what other’s hobbies were/ are disrupted my prior interpretation that hobbies required an exorbitant amount of time and money. While it is true that many hobbies require some amount of free time and maybe some level of financial solvency, not all hobbies do. I found out that someone I know read several hundred books per year and part of the reason they were able to do this was by not driving (reading in transit) and using a library card. I’ve also seen some of the best card and domino players in my life mop a whole group of players to the point where we thought the game was rigged; I know now that card counting is a thing, but it’s also safe to say that those games were the winner’s hobby and they played them often. Back to the “What do you do for a living?” question. I often find that adults often love to define themselves by, and center conversations around their occupations. It’s a bizarre concept to define oneself by a job title because job titles are temporary over the course of one’s life – I’ve never heard a truthful child, and rarely hear elders define themselves by their jobs or former employers. I’ve also specifically seen this question popularized in the US amongst currently employed adults. Sometimes the question is asked out of genuine curiosity, but I feel like it's more often asked as a way to try to establish some bogus hierarchy of respect, especially in mixed company. Asking about work also makes us fall back into our implicit biases, whatever they may be, for people with certain occupations, instead of trying to learn more about the individuals. One of the best conversations I had with a stranger started with “What good books have you read this year?”, so now I try to keep that near the top of the conversation. So whether you’re a returning reader or you’re reading your first post, hello to you. Thanks for visiting. What hobbies do you have? What good books have you read this year?

↓ Got thoughts? Drop a comment.

Comments

No comments yet — be the first to weigh in.

More Reviews

All reviews →

Join the Club

Notifications for new reviews — we'll never sell your contact info.

×