Are you ready for a new roaster (to KC Coffee Geek?)? You’d better be because this morning I’m starting off a series of new coffees from new-to-me roasters, Two Rivers, in Colorado. Slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17.50/12oz
TWO RIVERS WALICHU WACHU
Two Rivers is a roastery and cafe located in Arvada, Colorado (northwest of Denver). Follow the links above for more info or make sure you use the word, Colorado, in your own searches because, as it turns out, there are a lot of Two Rivers coffee places all over the country! Our Two Rivers is owned by Eric Yochim, who made the leap from fine dining to coffee in 2010 when Novo Coffee sold their struggling Arvada location to him. That’s a big jump! In 2015, Two Rivers doubled its capacity for customers and also added a glass wall for patrons to be able to see the roasting operation. Their cafe has a legit food menu and seems like a well-loved part of the Arvada community!
Two Rivers sent me a box o’ coffee recently and the first one I grabbed out was this Walichu Wachu. In addition to having an awesome name, I’m excited to rip into this Ethiopian coffee because it seems like I just haven’t been drinking much from there of late and so I want to break that trend. This is a grade 1 washed coffee from Haro Wachu in the Guji region of Ethiopia. Guji cranks out some of the most highly prized washed coffees in Ethiopia every year, it seems. This coffee comes from a bunch of smallholder farmers growing in that area and consolidating their coffee at the local washing station, Wolichu Wachu. According to the station manager, about 90% of the coffee they receive is Bourbon and the remainder is Typica and the growing altitude is an utterly insane 2100-2310masl! Some of the beans in my bag are the tiniest coffee beans I’ve ever seen and this proved to be one dense coffee in brewing. This washing station was just founded in 2017 and serves 4500 farmers in the area. This is a “special prep” coffee from Cafe Imports, so it gets extra special attention in the sorting process. All this should translate to an awesome cup.
I am using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water. I’m using a Trinity Origin brewer with all but the middle three holes blocked in the filter holder. Filter is a Kalita 155 and my Knock Aergrind has the hard duty of grinding. This is a dense coffee, so I could’ve opened up my grind a little to compensate, but it didn’t flow too slowly. Two Rivers tells us to expect, “intense floral flavors with bergamot, apple, orange and caramel flavors; juicy, sweet and balanced with tart fruit acidity and a heavy mouthfeel.” Yum!
The aromas on this coffee are fresh and beautiful and I am getting lots of florals and something that reminds me of strawberry or raspberry, as well as the aroma of peach. Taking a sip I get a medium-heavy body with a lightly syrupy mouthfeel and lots of intense flavors hitting my palate like a freight train. This is such a contrast to the washed Yirgacheffes I’m so familiar with, having their light body and tea-like flavor notes. I’m getting a lightly caramelized sugar base in this coffee and some of that fresh berry that I caught in the aroma. It’s not quite strawberry, not quite raspberry, but if you could put those two together then that’s what I’m tasting. I’m getting apple pie out the wazoo from this coffee, too! Red apples, baked crust, dusting of spices. It’s triggering a very specific flavor note of apple pie, not just apples. Around mid sip and into the finish of this coffee I’m getting more of a peach pie vibe and there is definitely peach in the aftertaste, which lingers forever (if you can possibly let it before going in for another sip). The finish is slightly sweet with a little bit of dryness on my palate in the aftertaste. This coffee has great balance between sweetness and all those fruity notes and it’s an easy drinker even with all this complexity.
This is a KILLER coffee. If you are at all a lover of Ethiopian coffees, put it on your must-buy list and don’t dawdle!
Spencer
Staying super close to there next month – guess we will have to add it to the list and check the place out in person!