Intensity/Prime Attribute: Medium-Bold intensity / Intense aromatics, floral, bright, perfumed, sweet
Roast: City to City+ is the best, brightest, sweetest cup.
getting coffee via a csa has been great but it has put a bit of a damper on my roasting. instead of struggling to keep up with our coffee consumption, my roasted beans have waited up to 2 weeks to be brewed. i finally made it through the last of our previous shipment (although i still have some green ugandan beans we ordered via a blackboard eats promotion) and am starting on a new shipment. i just finished roasting this ethiopian on P2 and the first crack came at 10:14 (remaining)!!! first crack rarely happens that soon. but come to think of it, these green beans are pretty tiny… the trick with P2 is to figure out when the first crack ends. all of my roasting documentation doesn’t give any advice on what happens when the beans hit first crack at 12 minutes into the roast.
also, P2 has a different profile than P1 (think of P1 as a bulldozer and a mack truck; think of P2 as a prius). tom at sweet maria’s advises not exceeding city+ so instead of waiting for P2 to take my beans to FC+, i stopped the roast at 7:00 minutes (remaining). tasting notes to follow…
o.m.g. just made the last of it. made a cafe au lait (sort of): half coffee, half milk and 3 cubes of la perruche. mmmmm, coffee flavored milk.
hmmm, brewed it today and it could’ve been grassier but, thankfully, wasn’t. the crema was extremely pale. m said it smelled like acid. i actually caught the coriander notes, but none of the other tasting notes came through. my experiment failed; back to the drawing board. gonna try P1 next time or P2 for longer. much longer.
tom’s (sweet maria’s) description: We were very excited when we first cupped the offer and pre-ship samples of this unique wet-process Yirga cheffe coffee. Kochere has produced some of my favorite Yirg coffees in the past, with a highly aromatic cup and intense, lively brightness. I visited there early this year and it seems that the more remote locations from the main Southern road (the 6) have many of the old, heirloom Yirga Cheffe cultivars in production. It was prepared to Grade 1 standards, and comes from the Teklu Dembel washing station. This is located near Ch’elelek’tu town in the Kochere Woreda of Yirga Cheffe. The altitude ranges from 1800 to 2000 meters, with approximately 600 small holder farmers contributing to this lot.
The aromatics are perfumed and floral, with bergamot citrus peel, honeysuckle blossom, berry and clover honey notes in the dry fragrance. With the addition of hot water, the same themes are continued, as well as fresh baked honey buns, melted butter and caramel. There is a unique accent of rue and coriander on the break. The cup is amazing, delicate, sweet, with strong retro-nasal aromatics. Flavors of jasmine, tangerine and caramel are accented by a grape-like acidity (tartaric), with vanilla, honey and floral perfumes. As it cools, new flavors emerge, with tangerine giving way to perfectly-ripe apple notes (Pink Lady came to mind!), with a touch of guava. Honeysuckle flower asserts itself in the aftertaste. We found that City to City+ roast was ideal, and too much development, approaching 2nd crack, resulted in a loss of these precious flavors and aromas.
via The Coffees of Ethiopia.