Ethiopia 🇪🇹 Limu 🍑
Hello Sideyard Friends,
This week’s coffee comes to us from the Limu region of the Oromia zone in west-central Ethiopia. Limu is not as well know as areas like Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, or Harrar, but it has everything you might want for quality coffee growing conditions—elevation, rich but well-drained soils, adequate rainfall, and temperate conditions. This specific lot was grown at 1800-1960m (5900-6500ft) above sea level and processed at the Feyisa Abamecha Washing Station.
Normally we roast coffee on Wednesdays, but this past Wednesday was prettttty cold, so we pushed roast day until today. This same-day roast/delivery changes two little things. 1) I haven’t tasted it yet and therefore can’t vouch for the importer’s tasting notes below, and 2) the brew bloom will be a little larger than normal. Most of the CO2 that coffee off-gasses after roasting happens in the first 4 hours or so, but it continues for a few weeks. This is why commercial coffee bags have a one-way valve—without it, freshly roasted coffee would burst the bag. For us though, it means you need to look out for that extra big bloom. If you use a manual brewer, you can give the bloom an extra 30 seconds or so before pouring the rest of your water. If, like me, you use an automatic drip brewer, you can also pause the brew cycle for a similar amount of time after the grounds first get saturated. Simply let the big bubbles recede and then proceed for a less messy brew.
The tasting notes from the importer include peach, honey, floral, green tea, lemon and lime. If it tastes half as good as it smelled in the roaster trier, it’ll be great.
The origin track for the week is a 1970’s Ethiopian jazz track by Ewnet Yet Lagegnesh by Bahta G. Hiwot.
We have a handful of extras in stock.
Ryan
p.s. One more note on off-gassing. If anyone is making espresso, I’d give this one a couple days or more if you can wait. The off-gassing really gets in the way of good extraction!