Sunergos Coffee has two Ethiopian coffees available right now, the Idido natural I reviewed last week and this washed selection from Guji, which produces some of peoples’ favorite washed coffees from that country. Let’s drink!
Purchase this coffee directly starting at $11/8oz
Sunergos Coffee Ethiopia Idido Natural review
SUNERGOS COFFEE ETHIOPIA HAMBELA
Sunergos Coffee doesn’t need much of an introduction. They’ve been staples in the specilaty roasting and cafe market in Louisville, Kentucky since 2003, making them as OG as it gets! They have multiple cafe locations in Louisville with good customer service ratings and their coffee is always fantastic, in my opinion, so there’s everything to like about Sunergos and the work they’re doing. Sunergos currently has two Ethiopian coffees available right now: the Idido, which is a natural process coffee (review linked above) and this washed coffee from the Guji area. Natural processing is where the coffee cherries are picked and hand sorted, then laid out to slowly dry in elevated mesh beds like big raisins. These coffees tedn to be fruitier and, when from Ethiopia, tend to have a lot of berry flavors. Washed coffees, like this morning’s Hambela, are picked and then sorted using float tanks (coffee cherries that float are not good) and long, narrow water-filled channels that as coffee is pushed through them with rakes, separate coffee by density, too. Once separated, washed coffees are pulped, which breaks the cherry skins and removes some of the goopy pulp from the seeds (coffee beans) inside the fruits. THEN these coffees are put in a fermentation tank where microbes eat away the remaining pulp, finally “washing” these coffees off completely. Washed/wet process coffees tend to be “cleaner” and clearer in flavor.
This morning’s Hambela is a mix of heirloom varieties from the Hambela Coffee Estate in Guji, Ethiopia. The estate is owned by METAD, a family-owned company that does a lot to strengthen the local community with jobs, education and imporoved access to healthcare. METAD also has the first and only private SCAA-certified coffee quality control lab in Africa, which is an amazing feat in its own right! Coffee grows around 1900-2200masl there and this is a fully washed coffee. Sunergos gives us aroma notes of, “floral, citrus, cereal, honey” and flavor notes of, “jasmine, citrus, cherry, almond, black tea.” 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. I use a Knock Aergrind that is proving to be nicely consistent. My times for this coffee came in around the 3:15-3:30 marks not including the bloom.
Aroma on this coffee is exactly as described. There is a nice sweet florality to it along with some light citrusy notes. Taking a sip, this is a light-bodied coffee, as many washed coffees from Ethiopia can be. There’s sweet lemon right up front and this lemon note carries through loud and proud all the way through the finish and into the aftertaste. I get some hints of blood orange in the acid profile in this cup, too and even a little sense of grapefruit pith in the aftertaste, so the acidity in this cup is both super delicious as well as complex. With that much citrus going on in the high end, there is also a beautiful sweetness to this cup that balances it out quite well. There’s honey as well as light caramelized sugar notes in the sweetness of this Hambela. For me, this coffee has a neutral to slightly sweet finish, so I’m not picking up on that much of a tea vibe. Washed Ethiopian coffees can be notoriously tea-like, which is something that comes from the light body, a bit of astringency in the mouthfeel and a dry finish along with those citrus notes. Picking up a strong black or green tea vibe from a washed Ethiopian coffee is not unusual at all, but that’s minimal for me with this cup. Toward the second half of the sip I do pick up some tart cherry and the acidity really is more orange than lemon here, but then the lemon kicks back in for the finish and then morphs, again, into a more grapefruit note for the aftertaste. As the cup cools toward room temperature, bigger sips yield a less balanced, more grapefruit peel forward flavor, so feel free to play with sip size as well as how long you let the coffee rest on your palate as this coffee changes A LOT based on those variables and that always blows my mind.
This is a really complex and structured coffee, especially in the acidity, but that doesn’t take away from its drinkability in the least for me. Often, for my palate, very complex coffees can be fatiguing and not as inviting as sometimes simpler cups, but this Hambela is both super complex and very easily drinkable and that in and of itself is notable. This is an absolutely killer example of just how great washed Ethiopian coffees can be! This is a stunner and, given that Sunergos has two Ethiopians available right now, the question I always get is “which one should I buy?” My answer, of course, is that with more affordable 8oz bags they make it easy to buy both and spend just $22, but if you’re on a tight budget or really just want to pick up one of them, the Hambela is the clear winner, for me. This is a really, really excellent coffee across the board.