Case Coffee Roasters Ethiopia Reko

Case Reko

One of my favorite things every month is when I come home to find a box from MyCoffeePub.com sitting on the doorstep and getting the (always) nice surprise of finding out what’s inside! MyCoffeePub is a monthly subscription service that sends you one bag of coffee every month. You never know what you are going to get and it’s a fun surprise and their choices are always excellent!

This month’s selection is Case Coffee Roasters‘ Reko, a washed coffee from Ethiopia. I’ve been following Case on social media for a while (probably since stumbling upon them when I was reviewing tons of coffee from Portland’s Case Study Coffee Roasters! LOL) and their coffee selections always look great. Case is located in Ashland, OR, opening first as a coffee shop in 2006 and then moving into roasting their own beans in 2011. They focus on sourcing beans from Guatemala, Kenya, Ethiopia and Colombia, which are pretty smart choices for finding quality beans! They roast “light and bright” on a unique 1950 Otto Swadlo roaster.[ref]http://www.leftcoastroast.com/10-questions-with-case-coffee/[/ref]

I was particularly happy to see their Reko as MyCoffeePub’s selection this month because I had an awesome experience with this coffee when I had it at Sump in St. Louis this summer. Sump’s Reko as espresso was definitely in the top few espressos I’ve had in my espresso-drinking life of 20 years. Unfortunately, I this has been a CRAZY week for me and so I will not get to try this as espresso next week. If I can pull good shots with it I will definitely post an update review! This coffee comes from Kochere/Yirgachefe and it’s a fully washed process. It’s comprised of a mix of heirloom varietals growing at 1850-2100masl. [ref]http://www.casecoffeeroasters.com/shop/ehiopia-reko[/ref]

Like a lot of the washed Yirgachefe coffees I’ve been lucky to drink lately this one had lots of floral aromas coming off the brewer. I used my usual 1:15 ratio in my Gino pourover and the total time took 5:00 for the brew. This is about a minute faster than my target time, but these lightly roasted, dense coffees tend to settle and compact at the bottom of the filter and slow things down a lot. They also need a little more contact time with the water for it to extract things, so the longer brew time didn’t bother me and the results seemed great.

The body on this coffee is on the heavy side of light or the light side of medium, however you want to think of it. It had a pretty short aftertaste and the finish was fairly neutral, neither sweet or dry. I got a lot of black tea notes out of this coffee, reminding me of last year’s washed Ethiopians more than this year’s. There was a lot of pectin sweetness in the cup that, with the tea flavors, gave the coffee that sweet peach tea character I like so much! The finish was a bit more tart, with some sweet lemon notes (also a good accompaniment to the peach and tea flavors!) as well as reminding me of the tangy twang I get from the peel of a peach.

In the cooling cup I got a couple shots of black pepper in my sips, which were an unexpected surprise. On my palate it wasn’t, “Hmmm…. what’s that? Something spicy? Is it a baking spice or maybe peppery…?” It was, “Oh, hello black pepper, interesting to meet you here!” LOL

This coffee is delicious and that peach sweet tea is just hard not to fall in love with. I can’t wait to rip into this on my espresso machine next week!