I’ve been hearing and seeing a lot about Compelling & Rich, a coffee roaster based out of Los Angeles, California, for the last few months, so I was super excited to try a small sample of their coffee I got in a coffee trade recently! The only downside was I only had 50g of this coffee to try out, but that was enough for a couple cups in the Gino dripper and for an espresso. Based on what I tasted, I am definitely going to need to get more samples from Compelling & Rich because I loved this coffee!
The coffee I sampled was their Ethiopia Kochere Grade 1. Details about the coffee can be found here and you can also order it for $15 for a 300g (10.6oz) bag. This is a high grade washed Ethiopian coffee from Kochere, near Yirga Cheffe, Ethiopia. I just reviewed a natural coffee from the same place, roasted by Onyx Coffee Lab, yesterday, so if you want to see the range coffees from the same place can have, make sure you check that out, too!
Compelling & Rich’s tasting notes for this coffee include, “Honeysuckle, white peach, sweet tea, light.” As a whole, washed Ethiopian coffees, which I have reviewed several of, tend to be overall lighter and more subtle than their natural counterparts. Naturals pick up a lot of flavors from the coffee cherry and mucilage remaining intact during drying, so they really are a totally different animal than a washed coffee even when they are from the same place and possibly even the same farms!
I noticed a very rich aroma on this coffee, reminding me of butter and coconut of all things, although neither of these flavors persisted in the cup! I really picked up a peach-flavored sweet tea from this coffee. The mouthfeel of this coffee, like a lot of Ethiopian naturals, is tea-like and has a slight drying effect on the palate as tea often does, but the coffee has delicate pectin sweetness throughout the sip that transmits as a light peachy flavor. I really, really loved this coffee! The peach tones picked up along with some floral aromas as the cup cooled. The mouthfeel reminiscent of black tea was more apparent in the cooling cup, too, but the coffee remained sweet and easy to drink.
This coffee was exceptional, to me, and I wrote, “Wow!” in my notebook as I was tasting it! As espresso, this coffee took on a whole different dimension. It was bright, with lots of lemon and tart cherries in the flavor. The finish was of very dark chocolate. While the espresso shot was certainly enjoyable, this washed Ethiopian blew me away as a drip coffee, so if you get this coffee, my recommendation is to spend it wisely as pourover!