BeanFruit Coffee Co. Ethiopia Kochere

beanfruit ethiopia kochere bagI’ve been away for a few days in Portland, OR (came home with 14 bags of coffee, so…), so it’s time to get back on the coffee review wagon! Today’s coffee is BeanFruit Coffee Co.’s Ethiopia Kochere. BeanFruit is a roaster based out of Jackson, Mississippi and they sent me a few sample bags, all of which I have been enjoying! You can get this coffee direct from BeanFruit for $14.75/bag.

Kochere is a town about 25 miles away from Yirga Chefe, so it’s right at ground zero for coffee production in Ethiopia. This is a washed coffee comprised of heirloom varietals (some 4,000 varieties of Arabica grow in Ethiopia!) and these coffees need to be roasted pretty lightly to get the desired flavor profiles out of them. Washed Ethiopian coffees tend to be very light, subtle, clean and can sometimes be downright more tea-like than coffee.

BeanFruit’s example of this coffee is tasty. I prepared my samples as Gino pourovers. It has a lot of strawberry in the aroma, enough that the first time I drank this coffee I went online to make sure I was correct thinking it was a wet-processed coffee and not a natural! True to style, this Kochere has a light body and short aftertaste. In the warmer cup I found lime and more strawberry and it was clean and refreshing. The mouthfeel “felt” strawberry-like, too, having that drying effect on my palate like eating strawberries can have! As the cups cooled I got some floral tones as well as a distinctively honeydew melon flavor.

I also tried this as a single origin espresso and it was pretty good, with flavors of bittersweet chocolate and currant. The lightly roasted beans are dense and heavy, so my usual 20g dose was a little low in volume in the portafilter. Still a nice, bright classic Ethiopian SO!

BeanFruit’s Kochere is a little more complex and layered than many of the washed Ethiopian coffees I’ve had, yet is still very light and clean overall. It’s a nice cup and this would be an afternoon drinker for me as I like the deeper, more sugared coffees in the AM.