It’s Thursday, it’s time to get serious at work so we can ride into a guilt-free weekend, so let’s do that with some help from my friends at Vibrant Coffee Roasters and their Gera Estate coffee from Ethiopia!
Other reviews in this series: Kenya Kariru AB | Ethiopia Qirtira Goyo
VIBRANT COFFEE ROASTERS ETHIOPIA GERA ESTATE
A quick apology before I dive into this review… this coffee recently sold out and I am still adjusting to a new work schedule that is a lot more variable, so my ability to get reviews out as fast as I used to has changed and I’m running quite behind on getting some of these posted. My sincerest apologies to the fine folks at Vibrant Coffee Roasters and to you, dear readers! It’s important to build Vibrant’s narrative here on KC Coffee Geek, though, so while this coffee is out of rotation now, the Qirtira Goyo I reviewed previously, also from Ethiopia, is still available and so are a bunch of Vibrant’s other excellent selections. Slurp!
Vibrant Coffee Roasters are a new (looks like they opened in the Spring of this year) roaster based in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area and they are affiliated in some way with Philly’s Function Coffee Labs. Vibrant’s website is a little short on backstory, but stocked with good coffee, so let’s jump right into this morning’s! This is Vibrant’s Gera Estate, a washed selection from the Aceh region that just recently sold out. This lot consists of several heirloom varieties grown around 1880-2180masl. The Gera Estate doesn’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides and I have yet to ever taste a bad coffee from Gera! Vibrant gives us tasting notes of, “Tart lemon, apricot jam, peach tea” for this coffee. I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind.
Something in the aroma coming from this cup reminds me of Graham cracker, and I kept getting notes that reminded me of a nice Graham cracker crust, like used in a cheesecake, throughout this cup. Taking a sip, I get a surprisingly full body and heavy mouthfeel from this coffee. I’d call the body here medium-heavy, but many washed Ethiopian coffees are super light and tea-like, so that’s a nice surprise. I’m getting a Graham cracker crust sweetness in the front end of the sip and now that I’ve mentioned cheesecake I’m finding all sorts of lemon and lime notes that I remember from the cheesecake recipe my mom made as we were growing up. While the bag says “tart lemon” I’m getting more of a sweet, Meyer lemon note from this coffee, and there are hints of lime in there, too. Often, lime, for my palate and brain, is accompanied by a bitter note that I find in actual limes, but this is a sweeter, almost more of a synthetic lime flavoring than actual lime fruit. I know that doesn’t sound great, but it really works beautifully in this coffee and I’m really enjoying the memories of mom’s cheesecake that this coffee has drummed up! There’s definitely apricot in this coffee… in coffee, for me apricot reads as that nice, mellow peach note but that also has a tartness to it like dried apricots. It’s really tasty in this coffee and I am always a fan of peach and apricot notes in any cup. There’s a little bit of a savory component to this coffee toward the end of the sip, which is another thing that I think conjured up those Graham cracker flavors for me. The finish of this coffee is nice and sweet and leaves a bit of a tea note on my palate for the aftertaste. This is another fantastic coffee from Vibrant Coffee Roasters!