A friend of mine who lives in Dallas had his pals at Novel Coffee Roasters send me a bag of their coffee from his subscription recently. I reviewed one of Novel’s coffees, a super high grown Colombian back in March, so I have been anxious to try more of what they have to offer for some time! They ended up sending their Idido, which is, unfortunately, sold out currently. When it was in stock it was selling for about $19/bag. Idido is a coffee farmers’ cooperative located in Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. For reference, if you’ve seen coffee from “Aricha” or “Misty Valley” then they probably came from the same farms, too.
Ethiopian coffees always contain a mix of heirloom varietals and in this region the trees would be growing in the 1800-2000masl range. This is a washed coffee, and I’ve been really enjoying the washed Ethiopian coffees I’ve been getting all year, so let’s see how Novel did with this one!
I prepared all of my cups using a Gino pourover dripper and unbleached Kalita 185 filters. I use a 1:15 ratio of coffee to water and my total time including a 30 second bloom on this coffee was ending up around 4:15-4:30 for the brew. There is a nice, sweet, floral fragrance to the grounds. Not as flowery as the Trunk Coffee Yirgacheffe Hama I had last month, but nice floral aromas nonetheless. In the cup I got a soft, round mouthfeel with hints of peach sweetness and some tropical fruits. The first time I made this coffee it had a surprisingly bitter undertone that I really enjoyed and thought was unique and also added depth and complexity to the overall experience. If you’re a beer drinker I’d compare it to Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA, which is super-tropical and sweet with the hops bitterness offering a lot of balance. In that first preparation I also got some hints of savory tomato like from a Kenyan coffee, so it was a little all over the place, but I liked everything I was tasting!
The other times I had this coffee, though, I didn’t get that same bitterness in the cup, or the savory/tomato, so that may’ve been a fluke! In these other cups I got the same peachy sweetness and a light lemon acidity in the cooler cup. Overall I found this to be a really enjoyable coffee. I always love peach flavors in coffee and the lemon acidity was nice to find, too. This year has been truly exceptional for washed Ethiopian coffees, in my opinion, where last year I found them to be too light, too tea-like and too lemony. This coffee struck a nice balance between the classic light body and lemony acidity as well as the more robust mouthfeel and sweetness of the current roasts and I really enjoyed drinking it!