Good morning and welcome to today’s review of Encore Coffee Co.’s Uraga Guji, a washed Ethiopian roasted right here in Kansas City!
ENCORE COFFEE CO. URAGA GUJI
I can’t believe it was 2016 when I was first introduced to Encore Coffee Co.! Mike King left corporate life to become a full-time roaster in 2016 and I’ve reviewed a handful of Encore coffees since then and always enjoyed them. Early on, Mike was roasting a little on the darker side of things, but more recently has taken to lighter roasts on his single origin coffees. I ran into Mike at my local farmers’ market one morning and he recently surprised me with a delivery of a couple coffees, one of which I’m reviewing this morning. I can’t tell if this coffee sold out since I received my bag a couple weeks ago, or if it is just out of rotation, but shoot Mike a message via email or Instagram and he’ll let you know. He has a lot of good stuff on offer right now, so you can’t go wrong with any of his coffees!
This morning’s coffee is Encore’s Uraga Guji, which is grown in the Uraga area of Guji, in Ethiopia. Like a lot of Ethiopian coffee, this lot is a mix of coffees grown by smallholder farmers (most have 1/2 hectare or less to grow on) who collect their production at the Layo Taraga Washing Station. This station serves about 500 farmers and coffees are brought in, mixed, sorted into lots, then processed here. This is a washed coffee, so the coffee cherries are ruptured in a de-pulper, then fermented in water tanks for 2-3 days before being dried, which takes about 9-12 days. This coffee is a mix of Bourbon and Typica varieties that grow around 2000masl. Mike calls this a “light/medium” roast and says it is, “Balanced and sweet with a smooth mouthfeel; lots of sugar flavor with caramel, chocolate, sugar cane juice, bergamot florals, and lime flavors.” Sounds awesome, so let’s dive in!
For my filtered cup review 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 a Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour the water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation during brewing. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and brewed in 3:25, not including the bloom, so just under 4:00 total.
I’m getting a lot of lime on the nose from this coffee’s aroma out of the Trinity Origin, which I think tends to collect aromas very differently than my cup, a Notneutral Lino that just lets everything out into the air. In the cup, the aromas are a little more floral with some chocolate notes and a lime/graham cracker aroma that reminds me of this lime-ish cheesecake my grandma used to make with a graham crust. Very specific, I know, but I can’t help it! Taking a sip, this is a medium- bodied coffee for me and I’m getting a lot of the same flavors I noticed in the aroma. The first thing that hits me is Earl Grey tea and lime notes. Earl Grey is a black tea infused with bergamot. Bergamot is a citrus fruit the size of an orange but is green like a lime. It’s hard to describe bergamot, but it leans toward an orange note, but more perfumed. Have a cup of Earl Grey and that’s bergamot! In my opinion, washed Ethiopian coffees as a whole tend to have tea-like body and flavor notes. Usually for my palate these read as black tea or green tea, but getting a hint of Earl Grey or bergamot is not unusual, either. There is a nice lime acidity to this cup that I enjoy a lot and on the lower end this Uraga Guji has a light caramel sweetness to it to balance all these high notes. If I hold the coffee in my mouth and agitate it some it reveals a really nice lemon note, but none of these citrus flavors are harsh or actually “acidic” tasting or feeling. They come citric and other acids in the cup, but if the word “acidic” is a turn-off to you I don’t mean it the way you may think I do. This is a balanced cup, although it definitely leans toward more delicate, floral, tea-like flavor experiences, which I thoroughly enjoy in washed Ethiopian coffees. The sweetness in the cup is more of a condiment than a main course, if you want to think of it that way, anchoring these high notes and keeping this coffee from being too bright. This coffee finishes dry on my palate and leaves a definite black tea/Earl Grey feeling and flavor on my palate. I suppose this could be described as “astringent” but that’s a defect when used in coffee lingo, and I wouldn’t call this coffee defective in any way. Most washed Ethiopian coffees have this dry, tea-like finish for me and it’s something I just come to expect from the more tea-like washed coffees from that country, so it doesn’t bug me a bit. This is a delicious coffee that I thoroughly enjoy as a pourover and I also really liked it as espresso…
Will it ‘Spro?
Heck yes, it will! I pulled a variety of shots and took notes on two that stood out. One was an 18.4g dose and I ran the machine for 30 (maybe 32, I was doing a lot all at once and I forgot) seconds and yielded 39.5g of espresso in the cup. This had nice intensity, balance and sweetness with a pleasant lime acidity. The finish was a bit dry, but still pleasant. Essentially a concentrated version of what I noticed in the pourover. I loosened my grinder jusy slightly and ran another shot with 18.0g in the portafilter, getting 39.6g of espresso in the cup in 25 seconds. This coffee was still quite pleasant, a little less intense with flavors of lime and graham really sticking out. There was something a little more savory here, too. Of these two shots I preferred the longer run time of the first shot, which I assume had better extraction since the water was in contact with the espresso bed for longer. Both were tasty and I think this coffee would do fine for people who like milkies, too, as the acidity is calm and would probably not fall victim to that “sour milk” note that can happen with some citrus-forward ‘spros.
For the tech nerds, my espresso setup is a Quick Mill Carola Evo with an IMS precision shower screen and an aftermarket bottomless portafilter using an IMS 16/20 precision basket. I use a Decent Espresso tamper that is their version 1 calibrated to 25lbs of tamp pressure. I used an Orphan Espresso Lido E grinder for these shots. As far as technique goes I grind, dose, WDT stir, then redistribute a little with my finger if needed, then groom the puck with an OCD-style groomer just to clean it up, then tamp. I hit the timer when I engage the pump.
