It’s a cold, dreary Monday morning here in Kansas City, so I need a warm, comforting coffee to start the day and I’m pretty sure this Brazilian from Omaha, Nebraska roaster, Bishopwoods Coffee Roasters, is going to fit the bill perfectly! Let’s get right to it…
Purchase this coffee directly for $15/12oz
Bishopwoods Coffee Roasters Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gedeb review
BISHOPWOODS COFFEE ROASTERS BRAZIL YELLOW BOURBON
I’m taking a look at the second coffee sent to me by Bishopwoods Coffee Roasters from Omaha, Nebraska. Owned by Jim Bishop, this roastery does online sales, some in-shop sales at a couple locations and contract roasts for at least one restaurant in the city. I really enjoyed Jim’s treatment on their Yirgacheffe Gedeb, which was outstanding and hit me with surprise after surprise as I drank it! This morning’s coffee is a low-altitude Brazilian from Fazenda Rainha. This is a large estate located in São Sebastião da Grama, south of the Minas Gerais coffee growing regfion. The farm has 280 hectares of coffee planted, 200 of which are Yellow Bourbon variety. All of Fazenda Rainha’s employees live on the farm and have health plans and unlimited hospital care. There is also a school onsite for the workers’ children to attend. The farm even features one of the last building projects of Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemayer. Finally, and not least importantly for us, Fazenda Rainha has been a finalist in Brazil’s Cup of Excellence competition/auction in 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010 and was awarded first place in 2011!
This particular coffee is a Yellow Bourbon grown somewhere between 900-1350masl and it’s a pulped natural, aka “honey process.” This type of processing involves picking and sorting the coffee cherries, breaking the skins and removing some of the gloopy, honey-like mucilage (hence the name) from the seeds (coffee beans) inside the fruit, then laying them out to dry on raised, ventilated beds or patios. This method gives coffee a bit more body, sweetness and fruitiness while minimizing some of the ferment flavors that true naturals, dried in the fruit like big raisins, often get.
For my cups I used my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filters. Handground grinder is set to 2 and I always use Third Wave Water for everything I brew. Bishopwoods gives us tasting notes of, “soft, citric, chocolate and fruit” on the label and, “caramel, hazelnut, creamy” on the website. Visually, this looks like a darker roast to me because of the color on the beans and there was some oil popping up on the surface of a lot of the beans.
Sure enough, this coffee definitely has a darker roast vibe to it and the timing couldn’t have been better. It has been dark and dreary here in KC for what seems like forever and this is the perfect “warm blanket” coffee for a morning like this! This coffee has a medium-heavy body and right up front there is both some light orange citrus acidity with a ton of dry process cocoa in the flavor. Toward the middle of the sip, that cocoa gets a little sweeter and finishes even sweeter at the end. There are flavors of dark chocolate and cocoa in the finish and aftertaste, as well as the sweetness of milk chocolate in there, too! For being a relatively dark roast, there isn’t a lot of roastiness in the flavors, which is what I found with Bishopwoods’ Ethiopian selection, too.
This coffee is just a chocolate bomb! I don’t think I have had this chocolatey of a coffee in recent times, if ever, actually. There is that cocoa dryness and pure chocolate essence, notes of the dark fruitiness of a artisinal dark chocolate bar and the finish is milky, sweet chocolate. Wow! There is a dark caramel sweetness to the cup and that orange acidity barely registers, giving it just a hint of a high note and a touch of balance, but really this coffee is all about those chocolate notes!
