Sideyard Coffee: September 23 - Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬 ☀️
Hello Sideyard Friends,
This week's coffee comes from Simbai, Papua New Guinea–a remote valley region known for rich volcanic soils and thousands of small holder coffee farmers. Some of these farmers have a full day's journey to get their harvests to one of four airstrips, where it's stored in warehouses until there is enough to fill a chartered flight out of the valley. From there it joins up with the larger supply chain and eventually makes its way to us. Lucky us!
The first thing I noticed when tasting this coffee is the buttery-smooth, stand-a-spoon-in-it body. Following that are notes of chocolate, plum, black tea, and brown sugar. The ground aroma is lovely too, centering around brighter tropical notes and chocolate.
The origin track for the week is a cover of Love is All Around, released in 1969 by the Papua New Guinea pop band The Stalemates.
Next Friday is a fifth Friday, which means Michael and I have a week off. :) If you need an extra bag to tide you over, we have a few extras from last week's darker-than-average Burundi and one from this week's roast as well. Or check out another local roaster! Melissa Elsmo included Sideyard in a great round-up of local coffee shops and roasters in the Wednesday Journal: Something's Brewing in Oak Park! Also in last week's Journal, Laura Derks wrote up a short piece about the original Sideyard HQ getting solar panels.
Cheers,
Ryan