Colorado’s Ki Roasters are back with some fresh new samples and I decided to pick their natural Ethiopian from Guji for my first pick out of this new series. Let’s drink!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17/12oz
KI ROASTERS ETHIOPIA GUJI NATURAL
Ki Roasters is a microroasting operation founded by Bert Davis in Littleton, Colorado. Bert got his first home roasting machine in 2016, which is crazy because his coffee is really good! Bert started selling coffee so he could tour with his band during the summer of 2016 and from there, things just kept growing as more people wanted Ki coffee. Bert started Ki officially in 2017 and roasts on a small Huky 500, although my Instastalking shows me that he has access to a friend’s larger Proaster for production, too.
This morning’s coffee is Ki’s Guji, a natural coffee from Kayon Mountain Farm in the Shakiso, Oromia region of Ethiopia. Kayon Mountain Farm is owned my multiple families that have been in the coffee trade for more than 30 years, although they pooled their resources as shareholders and started the farm just in 2012. The families share 500 hectares, half of which is planted with heirloom Typica coffee and the other half is forested and grows vegetables like cabbage. By 2015, the farm had washing stations and dry huller machines and was producing 300 tons of coffee per year! Coffee grows around 1900-2200masl at Kayon Mountain Farm. “Natural” or dry process coffees are a labor-intensive process in which coffee is hand-sorted after it’s picked and then laid out on raised mesh beds to dry. Coffee is a fruit about the size of a cherry, and coffee cherries contain seeds that we call coffee beans. Natural process coffees are dried with the cherry fruit still totally intact (think big raisins), and as the fruit breaks down it imparts fruity, sweet flavors to the coffee beans inside. Ki gives us tasting notes of, “blueberry, cocoa, apple, juicy” for this coffee.
I’m using my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with an Aergrind grinder. This coffee was coming out around 2:40 for the extraction after (and not including) a 30-40 second bloom. There’s a lot of berry notes going on in this cup, with my first few sips being super berry-forward. This is a medium-bodied coffee with a fairly dry mouthfeel throughout the sip and a dry, almost astringent finish. I kind of like the overall dryness of this coffee on my palate because it creates an interesting counterpoint to the sweetness of the berry notes. Usually the balance of a coffee comes from sweetness and acidity playing off one another, but in this case it’s really from the contrast of the mouthfeel to the sweetness, which I find unusual and interesting in a good way. There is definitely blueberry in this cup, for sure (my palate has recently re-awakened to blueberry notes, where I haven’t tasted it in coffee for a few years. Every other berry, yes, but not blueberry, until recently). I get some raspberry notes in the fruit in this coffee, too. I get a little lemon candy acidity and a little malic (which is associated with apples and I don’t often find in Ethiopian coffees) acidity in the cup, too. Now that I’m thinking about that hint of apple, the dryness and overall mouthfeel of this coffee does actually remind me of a really dry apple cider. Because this isn’t an overly-sweet natural, some of the cocoa/chocolate notes come through better for me, especially in the second half of the sip.
This is a really interesting, surprisingly complex natural and a great example that not all Ethiopian naturals are the same. This one has an overall “adult” feel to it, with the dryness that offsets the inherent sweetness of the coffee. The cocoa, berries and acidity play brilliantly with each other and make this a nicely drinkable coffee for something that’s overall complex. Bert’s roasting never fails to impress and this is why!