Sideyard Coffee: September 16 - Burundi 🇧🇮 + Burundi Black
Hello Sideyard Friends,
This week's coffee is a Burundi dry process. We've had a run of wet process coffees lately, and I didn't realized how much I was missing the dry process flavors. As a reminder, dry process coffees get dried with the cherry in tact, which tends to impart fruitier, funkier, and sometimes more rustic flavors. This week's coffee checks all of those properties. The first thing that hits is the intense rustic cocoa bittersweet note. That's followed by a fruited accent reminiscent of wild berries and stone fruits. Between these two qualities, it straddles the roast spectrum really nicely–dark enough to satisfy those looking for some heft, but lacking anything that could be described as ashy or burnt tasting.
The origin track for the week is Burundi Black by Burundi Steiphenson Black. I'm cheating a little on the origin here, but it's a fun track with an interesting backstory. In 1967 a couple of anthropologists made field recordings featuring the Burndi Royal Ingoma drummers. Those field recordings were sampled by the French pianist and producer Michel Bernholc (aka Burundi Steiphenson Black) on a 1971 track that made it's way to #31 on the UK singles chart. It sounds to me like the drum sample is from this track on the field recordings.
Cheers,
Ryan