February 4, 2022

Sideyard Coffee: February 4 - Ethiopia 🇪🇹 + 🛥 🪨

Hello Sideyard Friends,

There's an old saying in the coffee roasting business: "Some days you roast the coffee, and other days the coffee roasts you." This week was one of the latter.

Every coffee reacts a little differently as heat is applied at various phases of the roast and it usually takes one, maybe two batches to understand how a new coffee responds in the roaster. The three generally agreed upon phases are 1) drying phase (green to yellow), 2) browning stage (yellow to light brown), and 3) development stage (when the coffee starts making an audible cracking sound until it's determined to be done). This week's coffee wanted to crash (loose a lot of heat) during the first phase and then race (gain a lot of heat) at the end. While it can be a little frustrating when you're in the midst of wrestling with a roast, it's also what keeps it interesting from week to week! 

Thankfully, it's tasting great. The notes from the importer list berry, dried apricot, floral, honey, jasmine. This one is roasted dark enough to cover up anything that might be defined as floral or jasmine, but the berry and apricot are there and maybe the honey. It stays pretty close to what you might expect from a natural process Ethiopian coffee and for me that's never going to be a letdown. 

The origin track of the week is the extremely 1980's Anchi Bale Game by Admas from their Sons of Ethiopia Album. It was reissued in 2020 and I can see why. Yacht rock is always in fashion. 

Cheers,
Ryan

not a thing.