May 4, 2021

Sideyard Coffee: May 7 - Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬

Hello Sideyard Friends,

This week's coffee comes from a new origin for Sideyard and holy Moses check out that flag! It features the Southern Cross constellation and the Raggiana bird-of-paradise set in a striking diagonal design. I'm no vexillologist, but this one gets high marks in my book.  And... sorry, I have to use all caps here... IT WAS DESIGNED BY A 15 YEAR OLD named Susan Karike. It seems that she received few accolades during her lifetime, so please join me in raising your coffee mugs this week to the late great flag designer Susan Karike Huhume.

Much of the coffee produced in Papua New Guinea comes from small lot subsistence farmers, some of whom might have as few as 20 coffee shrubs in their garden. This means that most of the specialty coffee is a mix of cherries brought in from hundreds of regional farms in the immediate vicinity of the processing station. This can make for greater size variation in the beans and, concordantly, a bit of extra variation in roast level. Also, due to local law, all of it is organic even though it's not certified as such. This batch is creamy and sweet with some darker brown sugar and toffee notes.

My origin track recommendation for the week is Abebe by George Telek. It's an understated song featuring a beautiful three part vocal harmony, a fingerpicked guitar, and a delightfully meandering whistle section.

Cheers,

Ryan

p.s. I started aggregating/archiving the music recs with this Spotify playlist.