Good morning and welcome to today’s review! I was able to hit Courier Coffee, who have been on my list of Portland shops for a long time, earlier this Fall and I picked up this bag of natural Ethiopian coffee while I was there. Let’s check it out!
Available only in-shop or by bike delivery
COURIER COFFEE ETHIOPIA GIRMA EDEMA LOT 49
I’ve had the pleasure of traveling to Portland, Oregon quite a few times for work since I started KC Coffee Geek back in 2015. One shop/roaster that has always been on my list to try is Courier Coffee, but with a rental car this part of town always seemed really busy and a bit tough to get to. My last trip in October I stayed at the Embassy Suites, which is right in the heart of things. Looking out one of my windows, Stumptown was across the street, and through the other windows I had Voodoo Donuts right there (although, Blue Star is my jam) and the “Keep Portland Weird” sign on the back of Dante’s. That hotel, and my particular room, couldn’t have been more Portland if you asked! LOL With a 10-15 minute walk to Courier, I could finally make my move!
Courier Coffee is a tiny little bare bones shop with a small bar and a handful of tables tucked around it. It’s a utility space and it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than that. It’s very well situated, with the Chrome messenger bag store down the street, Boxer Ramen nearby and the insanely great Powell’s Books just down the block, this is definitely the walking part of Portland and it’s excellent. Courier appears to have been around for a long time, starting around 2008. Their website is as bare bones as the shop, but they’ve been blogging whatever is on their minds since 2009, which is pretty cool. Courier Coffee is the brainchild of Joel Domreis, who started roasting and delivering coffee by bike throughout the city. With this ethos in mind, they don’t do online or shipped sales, so if you want to taste Courier Coffee you need to drop into the shop and buy a bag or order a cup. Courier’s bags have Joel’s phone number and a simplified version of their logo on them, with the details handwritten in pen. My bag of Girma Edema Lot 49 Guji, Oromia, Ethiopia was 1/2 pound (227g) and roasted on 9/29 at 12:48pm. If I remember right, I paid $9 for it, so I bought something else while I was there, too. The cool thing about smaller bags is they’re more affordable and you can buy a couple coffees and try them out, which I love.
In shop I had an espresso, which was very good. I found myself walking this route several times, so I dropped in for espresso a couple more times over the weekend I was there and the coffee was always great!
This coffee is a natural lot processed by the Kilenso washing station in the Guji Zone of the Oromia Region in south-central Ethiopia. Coffee grows around 1800-2200 meters above sea level there and the Kilenso washing station that processes smallholder farmers’ coffees from that area is owned by Girma Edema, who has 20+ years of experience in the business. I made my cups of this coffee using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin. I pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee bed during brewing and a Knock Aergrind does the hard work.
The bag for this coffee didn’t indicate natural or washed, and usually that problem is solved instantly getting the fragrance of the beans from the bag, but I was thrown off because I wasn’t getting a lot of that typical Ethiopian natural berry-forward fragrance. The beans weren’t that typical reddish hue, either, per se, so I wondered if this was a washed coffee instead. Hitting them with the grinder released that fragrance I am so used to, but it wasn’t as obvious as with some naturals, and again, the aroma from the brewing vessel threw me off again as did my initial sip immediately after brewing (and way too hot to entertain even drinking).
As the cup cooled, my first real sip solved all my confusion about whether this is a washed or natural coffee, as that hit of blueberry is unmistakeable! The aroma in the cooling cup also settles down and offers a typically “Ethiopian natural” experience with some chocolate and berries coming through. Taking a sip, I’m hit with a lot of blueberry along the lines of that Booberry cereal, along with fresh strawberry and raspberry, too. There is a floral note to this cup, too, so blackberry, which I associate with a floral overtone, is not out of the question here, either. Mixed berry jam in a cup! I say this about every coffee, and it’s true, but this is definitely a coffee that needs to cool down to about lukewarm to get the most out of it. I’m drinking the last vestiges of my bag as I write this up (and 8 weeks off roast did nothing bad to this coffee, I can assure you!) and my last 1/2 cup is room temp now and it’s fantastic. In addition to all that berry fruitiness, there is a bit of a tropical acidity in the cup for me… it’s that little acidic bite I get from pineapple, but there is no pineapple flavor note here, just that little kick of acidity that reminds me of it and that brightens up my tastebuds and adds a nice ceiling to this coffee. On the other end of the spectrum, there is some cocoa to be found here, too, anchoring the coffee on the low end. In the warmer sip and especially in the aftertaste I’m getting a cereal note that works really well for this cup, too, and that just adds to the “Booberry in a cup” vibe this coffee has. For a natural, I’m getting almost no ferment notes, either, which is cool, if those notes turn you off. Personally, I love a fermenty natural, but this has very little of that in it. There’s more milk chocolate in the aftertaste, too.
All in all this is an awesome coffee! Amazingly, this is considered a “Grade 3” natural in Ethiopia, with Grade 1 being the highest grade of natural coffee there. This is an absolutely delicious coffee and expertly roasted, too. I hate that you can’t just zip over to Courier’s website and order up some of their current offerings, but I get it and I respect Joel’s decision. It makes finding this little gem of a shop even more special in that regard, seeing what bags are sitting on the shelf for you to buy and enjoying that part of Portland that you can only experience from being there!