Let’s swing back through Africa by way of my friends at Lone Oak Coffee with their Guji Ethiopia, a natural that smells incredible in the bag!
Other reviews in this series: Costa Rica San Antonio
LONE OAK COFFEE GUJI ETHIOPIA
Before I roll into this review, I want to apologize to roasters and readers as I am adjusting to a new work schedule that is quite a bit more variable in the mornings than it used to be, so which days I can write and post on has changed and is inconsistent. As such, a few recent coffees, like today’s, have been replaced in these roasters’ lineups with other offerings, but I still want to share my thoughts and help build the reputation on KC Coffee Geek that these roasters deserve!
One such roaster is Lone Oak Coffee, who I first got a taste of about a year ago and was impressed with. Sam Kayser started Lone Oak around 2015 as the roasting arm of Hopscotch Coffee and Records in Winchester, VA. Over time, Lone Oak outgrew its tiny space in the record shop and the divisions of the Hopscotch business (coffee shop, roasting and records) splintered off the main trunk (see what I did there?). Sam went from 15×15 feet to 2100 square feet in a new roasting facility and has been kicking butt ever since. Lone Oak coffees have done very well at Golden Bean North America Roasting Competitions and Lone Oak took a fantastic 9th place in the 2017 US Roasters Championships with the Specialty Coffee Association, the big coffee show here on planet Earth!
The coffee I’m sharing with you this morning, which is sadly sold out, is Lone Oak’s Guji, a natural from Ethiopia. I missed the info from their page, too, and Google wouldn’t open up the cached page, so I screwed the pooch completely on this one! Lone Oak’s current Ethiopian selection is a Yirgacheffe that sounds like it’s a washed coffee and the description sounds awesome. I haven’t had a bad coffee from Lone Oak, yet, so I would buy with confidence from them!
When it comes to Ethiopian coffees, Guji tends to rank highly on the names that aficionados recognize. With excellent washed and naturals coming from this area, Guji seems synonymous with high quality these days. Opening the bag I was greeted with beautiful, smooth, lightly roasted beans with that characteristic reddish hue that Ethiopian naturals take on during their slow fermentation in the cherry. The bag smells like a berry bomb, with lots of blueberry like a box of Booberry cereal. I used my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin brewer. This is a dense bean and the extraction ran a little long at about 4:10 total including a 30 second bloom.
I’m getting a bunch more of that blueberry fragrance in the aroma of the brewed cup. My palate shifted a couple years ago from tasting blueberry in every natural Ethiopian to picking up more strawberry, blackberry, etc. So, when I catch a lot of blueberry in a coffee it really takes me back to my early days of learning to appreciate specialty coffee and origin characteristics. Taking a sip, this is a medium bodied coffee and, as you guessed it, there are berry flavors out the wazoo in this cup! There’s a syrupy, light caramel sweet base to this cup, but right over that washed a wave of berry notes. I’m getting blueberry and strawberry in there, and at the end of this wave I get a pretty good shot of florals, too. Berry + floral always reads as blackberry to me, which I think have a floral component to them, so I’m throwing blackberry into the mix, too. This berry wash is really structure, with blueberry up front, strawberry at the crest of the wave, and blackberry in the finish, which is cool. There’s a bit of lemon candy acidity here to brighten up the cup, but just a bit. This is a really sweet caramel and berry melange with just enough acidity to balance that and add some more depth to the coffee. There’s a good amount of ferment note I’m picking up in this coffee. Ferment is a turn off for some coffee drinkers and it really just rubs them the wrong way. Personally, I don’t mind it a bit and even really enjoy it in really crazy fermented naturals like Miersch Funky Naturals from Nicaragua. So, bring it on! It’s not a detractor from the cup, but people who dislike naturals because of ferment notes would probably avoid this coffee. I love it and the ferment just adds another layer to enjoy, for me. The finish is sweet with a surprisingly light, floral aftertaste. I get a little Dutch cocoa right in the end of the sip and into the finish, too.
Another super coffee from Lone Oak. This is one of my favorites I’ve tasted from them and, again, my sincerest apologies about missing the cutoff for this coffee’s availability. I’m doing some things to try to prevent that as much in the future, although it’s great for Lone Oak when they hit the end of their supply of a coffee. That IS the point of selling coffee! LOL