Let’s start the week off with an Ethiopian selection from new Canadian roaster, Sly and Sons Coffee Roasters. This is a honey process/semi-washed coffee and I don’t see those from Ethiopia very often so I’m excited to jump in!
Sly and Sons Coffee Roasters Instagram
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SLY AND SONS COFFEE ROASTERS ETHIOPIA YIRGACHEFFE
Sly and Sons Coffee Roasters is a newly emerging coffee roasting operation based outside of Toronto, Canada. Mark Sly sent me a couple coffees to check out and I was holding onto this review until their official website was up and running, but it looks like there have been delays and the show must go on here at World Domination HQ, so keep your eyes peeled to Mark’s Instagram (link above) for updates. A website with ordering should be arriving soon!
This morning, I’m tasting Sly and Sons’ Ethiopia Yirgacheffe that is labeled on the bag as “semi-washed.” Other than that, I don’t know anything about this coffee’s origin. I reached out to Mark for more info on his background and interest in coffee, as well as on these coffees he sent me, but I didn’t hear back. Life gets busy for people, I understand! “Semi-washed” coffee is a nebulous term and it means different things to different processors, but the gist of it is that the coffee cherries are fed into a demucilager machine and the skins and some amount of the “honey,” a sticky, mucilage nutrient layer for the coffee beans inside, is removed while some is left behind. This is often referred to as “honey process” too. The beans are dried with this sticky layer intact and it’s supposed to impart some body and fruitiness to the coffee with less ferment than a traditional dry/natural process where the cherries are dried whole and intact. For me, semi-washed coffees are often hard to differentiate from washed coffees, but we’ll see with this one. Sly and Sons gives us tasting notes of, “citrus, floral aroma, sparkling acidity” for this coffee.
I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with a Kalita 185 filter. Grinder is an Aergrind from Knock.
There is a nice jasmine-like aroma in this coffee’s nose. Mark calls this a light roast, which looks solidly “medium” to me, visually, but visual analysis usually doesn’t tell the whole story when it comes to coffee. Taking some sips, I’m met with a medium-bodied coffee that has a lot of sweetness and some fruitiness in it. As the cup cools it takes on a nice, mellow, very well-balanced vibe that I’m really enjoying. There is a light, honeyed sweetness with hints of caramel in this coffee providing all that sweetness. I get roasty notes, too, especially in the aftertaste, so I’d still call this a “medium” roast, although that is in the eye of the beholder. In the mid-sip there is a florality to this coffee and there is a also a peachy sweetness and fruitiness here, too. Readers should know how in love I am with peachy Ethiopian coffees, so you know I like this one! There’s a bit of citrus character to the acidity, but really it reads more as that slight “edge” that comes from peach or apricot, although I wouldn’t say there is any apricot note in this coffee. It’s that same bit of bite or tartness that I associate with apricot, although dialed way back and smoothed over more. The acidity is a little more pronounced in the warmer cup and becomes very mellow as it cools. The finish is just a little on the dry side of neutral for this coffee, and there is a fair amount of roastiness in the lingering aftertaste.
All in all, this is a really enjoyable coffee. There is some nice fruitiness without any ferment, and the roast level (and perhaps the semi-wash) gives this cup a little more body and presence than some fully washed Yirgs can have. This is super-balanced and drinkable and I’m going to put it to work as a cold brew, too, and I’m sure it’s going to be excellent that way! For being a brand new roaster on, presumably, low volume equipment intended for test roasts or home-roasting, I’m really impressed with these coffees from Sly and Sons Coffee Roasters. The future looks bright!