Good morning and welcome to today’s review! This is an organic coffee from new-to-me roaster, Starved Rock Coffee Co. Let’s find out who they are and get drinking! It’s Friday, no time to waste!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17.50/12oz
STARVED ROCK COFFEE CO. ORGANIC ETHIOPIA
Starved Rock Coffee Co. was founded by Matt and Jill McLaughlin, lifelong residents of the Illinois Valley area west/southwest of Chicago. They have five (5!) kids and coffee started as a simple pleasure, then became a business idea. They trained experts in the field and it looks like the company got its start in late 2017. Starved Rock started out on a San Franciscan roaster, and more recent photos in my Instaresearch, showed they were roasting on a Probat, so they’re not just playing around with this whole coffee thing!
The first thing I noticed about Starved Rock’s coffee was the packaging. Like a lot of us coffee geeks, I am partial to good coffee in pretty packages and I instantly fell in love with this coffee’s bag. White zip-top bag with a gorgeous shiny gold-ish foil stamped logo. The gold has a lot of red to it, so maybe bronze or copper would be the more appropriate descriptor. It’s not totally reflective, it has a little bit of texture to it to make it shiny and slightly matte and it’s just beautiful on that white bag. And, by the way, where does the name Starved Rock come from? Starved Rock is a popular state park outside of Chicago in the Illinois Valley. In the 1760’s, battles were going on between two tribes of indigenous people (humans have inhabited Starved Rock since 8000BC!) and their allies. A band of Illinois tribespeople took refuge atop the sandstone butte that is the “rock” in the name, and was surrounded by the enemy tribes where they eventually succumbed to starvation. Today, the park is a beautiful, peaceful refuge for people to get out of the city and enjoy a little nature.
This morning’s coffee is Starved Rock’s Organic Ethiopia. This is a natural process coffee from the Guji zone of Ethiopia, coffee growing ground zero, basically. Starved Rock doesn’t have much info on their website about this coffee other than tasting notes, saying it should taste, “Sweet, clean and smooth with a winey fruit acidity and notes of blueberry, red grape and citrus.” Really the only thing I can ding Starved Rock with in this review is the lack of more coffee geek info on their website. I understand there is probably a conscious decision that goes into not putting every little detail on the site (probably intimidating to normal people!), but it would be cool to have a link to more info for those of us who want to know the estates or washing stations, altitude, etc. If that’s the worst thing that happens in this review, though, we have a lot to be happy about!
A quick word on what “natural” processing means in case you don’t know. The coffee “beans” we know and love are actually seeds found in a coffee cherry. Usually two of them are packed into a fruit about the size of a regular cherry. These fruits are picked at the ideal time and they have to be processed further to get to those seeds. Natural coffees are picked and sorted, then with the fruit still totally intact, the cherries get spread out on raised mesh beds to slowly dry and break down in the in the sun, like big raisins. The seeds inside are like sponges for the byproducts of this breaking down process, so they soak up all kinds of chemicals that give flavors that remind people of citrus fruits, tropical fruits and from Ethiopian varieties of coffee, berries in particular. Ethiopian naturals, especially lightly roasted ones like this one, are very fruit-forward, sweet, bright cups.
I am using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 353g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and this coffee had a total brew time of a little longer than expected at 4:30, but it tasted awesome. Dense Ethiopian beans tend to slow down flat-bottom drippers like the Origin, Kalita Wave, etc, but if tastes good, it tastes good!
I was getting a lot of florals from the cup as I waited for it to cool down to drinking temp. Taking a sip, this is a medium+ bodied coffee for me and it’s a classic Ethiopian natural for me. There’s a light caramel sweetness to the cup and loads of fruits to parse out with each sip. I’m getting a little blueberry here, but more raspberry to my palate. There’s a fresh berry acidity here, not quite to the extent as eating a raspberry, but this coffee has that same dynamic of fruit sweetness and brightness with a hint of tartness from the acids giving me the fruit notes. There is also a citrus acidity to the high notes in this coffee. It’s something that’s the intersection of lemon and orange, for me, with a bit of a tropical fruit note added in for good measure. I’m getting a lemony brightness and crispness here but the actual flavor I’m getting reminds me more of orange, with a softer, sweeter, rounder character than lemon. It’s really good! I’m getting some hints of coriander in each sip toward the end of the sip and into the finish. This coffee finishes sweet and leaves a pleasant, lingering aftertaste of coriander and raspberry to me. Maybe a bit of plum, too.
This Organic Ethiopia is a very easy drinking coffee for me, with all the flavors I love in natural Ethiopians. The ferment is either pretty low or blends in well with the rest of the flavors. I personally don’t mind ferment flavors in coffee whatsoever, but unless you’re super-sensitive to them, I think this coffee is a pretty clean-tasting example of a natural. What a great introduction to Starved Rock Coffee Co.! This is a killer coffee in pretty packaging and buying it supports a family business… what more could I ask for?!