That eclipse was something! We had nasty, thick clouds and rain all day in Kansas City, but the skies opened up perfectly clear for the totality event and then closed right back up again! Amazing luck! I hope my string of luck keeps up with this natural Ethiopian coffee from Brugh Coffee Co., featured in this month’s Barista Coffee Box! Let’s drink and find out!
Purchase this coffee directly for $16.50/12oz
Barista Coffee Box subscriptions
Brugh Coffee Co. Peru Amazonas review
Brugh Coffee Co. Nicaragua Perfectionist Microlot review
BARISTA COFFEE BOX AUGUST 2017: BRUGH COFFEE CO. ETHIOPIA KONGA
I’ve been digging the other two coffees I tried from this month’s Barista Coffee Box so far. This month’s featured roaster is Brugh (say it like, “Brew”) Coffee Co. from Christiansburg, VA. Click the links above to learn more about Brugh and their mission to help people make those connections that coffee is all about. This morning’s post-eclipse coffee is a natural from the Konga microregion of Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone, where Yirgacheffe and the birthplace of coffee are to be found. This is a Grade 1 natural coffee lot of heirloom varieties collected by many smallholder farms as part of a coffee growers cooperative. Coffee grows around 1800masl in Konga and Brugh gives us tasting notes of, “freeze dried strawberry, pink lemonade” and a, “dried cherry, cranberry and lemonade-like acidity.”
Natural coffees processing is the method wherein the coffee cherries are picked and sorted, but remain whole and intact for drying. Naturals are laid out in a layer over raised, ventilated mesh beds and the fruit breaks down as it dries, imparting fruity flavors, body and sweetness to the coffee beans inside. On the downside, natural coffees can pick up some off flavors or fermenty funk (which I actually quite like, personally!) that turn some coffee drinkers off, but for the most part, natural Ethiopian coffees are the gateway for many coffee drinkers into the world of specialty coffee and the realization that not all coffee “tastes like coffee.” LOL
I used my standard reviewing pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with my Handground grinder set to 3 and using Third Wave Water. The dry fragrance on the ground beans was like Frankenberry cereal (freeze-dried strawberries is exactly what that fragrance is)! The aroma on the immediately-brewed cup had notes of raspberry, blackberry and stewed plums, for me, but as the cup cooled it mellowed back into that Frankenberry/freeze-dried strawberry aroma again. The sip is redolent with that same freeze-dried strawberry flavor along with some raspberry, too. This is a nicely berry-forward natural, which is always enjoyable for me. The sip is sweet and fruity up front with a medium body. Some lemon candy/lemonade acidity comes into play in the middle and second half of the sip. This adds a nice top note to the already vivacious fruitiness of this coffee and the acidity is apparent but candy-like and not harsh of cutting at all. It’s a soft, complementary acidity and it works perfectly in this cup. I’m picking up a good amount of watermelon in this cup, too, which surprises me because melon notes in general are tough for me to pick up on and this is really apparent for me, at least at the temperature the cup is currently at! This watermelon note is more like watermelon candy, like a Jolly Rancher, than actual watermelon, although it doesn’t taste totally synthetic. What a great surprise! The cup finishes sweet with a lot of that lemonade tone on the back of my tongue and in my throat. The finish has some of that watermelon candy, lemon and hints of the berries, too.
This is a really nice cup. Overall I would call this a pretty clean-tasting example of a natural coffee. There is a hint of ferment in the front of the sip, but it’s pretty minimal in my opinion. The strawberry, raspberry, lemon/lemonade and watermelon notes are all really clear and structured, giving nice complexity but all in that same fruity vein rather than being lots of different types of notes on the flavor wheel. I was hoping my eclipse luck was going to keep on rolling with this coffee and I am not disappointed! This is a really nice example of a well-done Ethiopian natural and it’s just delicious!