There are few certainties in life, but when it comes to coffee there is one I’ve arrived at and that’s when a box from BeanFruit Coffee Co. lands on my doorstep, what’s inside is always good! BeanFruit are located in Jackson, Mississippi and I’ve gotten to taste a lot of their coffees (scroll down to Mississippi in the list). They are consistently excellent and I consider them a roaster I could point anyone toward and they’d like their offerings.
Today I’m looking at BeanFruit’s Adado Cooperative, a washed coffee from the Yirgacheffe area of Ethiopia. This coffee consists of heirloom varietals grown in the 2000-2350masl range by multiple farmers in the region who are using the same washing and processing station near Yirgacheffe. You can buy this coffee directly from BeanFruit Coffee Co. for $15.25/12oz bag.
In Ethiopia, many coffee farmers are small-holders with the average farm being 0.7 hectares. Because it’s tough to get a single lot from that and have the infrastructure to export it to a buyer, coffee works quite a bit differently in Ethiopia than in other countries. The Gedeo zone, where “Adado” coffee comes from, has 7,000 farmers growing coffee. How would you like to spend a week there trying to cup even a small fraction of those?!
As such, Ethiopian coffee farmers are members of cooperative societies who pool their harvest together for sorting and processing and receive a percentage of profits based on the sale of the lots on the coffee exchange. That’s why you rarely, if ever, see a particular lot from a single farmer or estate in Ethiopia.
BeanFruit offer tasting notes of, “Tangy, sweet peach, jasmine, silky.” I was able to pull a little peach or apricot out of the aroma, but unless they’re really floral I don’t often get tons of aroma from them, as was the case with this one. Oh, and I used my usual 1:16 ratio (28g coffee, 450g water) in a notNeutral Gino pour over with Kalita 185 filters for my cups of this coffee.
In the cup there is a lot of sweetness, but it’s delicate. There is a lot of peach character to the sweetness but it has a pretty dry finish, which also lends itself to the peach comparison because it’s that same “pore tightening” feeling I will get from peach skin. There is some lemon acidity in the cup, too, to brighten things up, but the acidity is really quite tame. It’s there for balance and uplift, but it really isn’t a main component of the flavor.
The body is relatively light on this coffee and the aftertaste doesn’t linger for too long. The finish is a bit on a dry side, but that’s a minor “complaint.” There is a bit of a tea-like vibe to this coffee, which is classic for Yirgacheffe. My overall impression of this one is that it’s sweet, delicate and light but has enough substance to not make the drinker wonder if they’re having a cup of coffee or tea! I’ve been having some really nice, big coffees lately, so it’s nice to get a reminder of what a more subtle and delicate cup can bring to the table, too. Delicious!