Good morning and welcome to today’s review of a local Kansas City roaster that I have been neglecting for far too long, Second Best Coffee and their Ethiopia Shakiso!
Purchase this coffee directly for $20/12oz
SECOND BEST COFFEE ETHIOPIA SHAKISO
Second Best Coffee opened in Kansas City’s Waldo neighborhood in early 2014 (man, it seems like yesterday!) with the intent of being a “slow bar” and espresso shop. Slow bars have no batch brewed coffees, every cup is made to order using a pourover or other by-the-cup system. The aesthetic of the shop was based on modern appointments and cycling, and a few years later the shop expanded into the space next door. I haven’t been there since and I feel like I need to explain myself because Second Best is a well-loved (and deservedly so) coffee shop in this city FULL of great coffee shops. Second Best started off as a multiroaster, offering selections from all sorts of other US roasters. I actually attended my very first coffee cupping there in late 2014, which surprised me how long ago that was, and they have been roasting and selling their own coffee since the end of 2014 or early 2015. I would have said, “for the past couple years” and man, how time flies! I’ve reviewed some of Second Best’s espresso drinks WAY in the past, but this is actually the first of their own roasted coffee I’ve had since that cupping. Second Best’s motto is “Midwest modesty” and the name comes from the idea that tomorrow’s coffee will be better than today’s, so they will always be “second best” as they strive for perfection.
Am I anti-Second Best? Not at all. Waldo is a neighborhood about 15 minutes away that I don’t go through or around or near unless I am specifically going to Waldo, and I just never specifically go to Waldo, so it’s one of those parts of Kansas City I have to be very intentional to get to. Things have slowed down, a lot, due to Covid, so I have been trying to support as many local shops as I can by buying coffee from them, something I generally don’t have the luxury of doing since I usually have 5-10 bags open here at World Domination Headquarters from roasters sending samples to me. I know it sounds weird, but Kansas City is one of the cities I get to try THE LEAST amount of coffee from, in a twist of terrible irony! LOL And I have a pretty kickass home espresso setup, so pre-Covid, if I dropped into a shop for coffee it was usually espresso and usually a quick between-work-things pick-me-up at either Broadway, Oddly Correct or Monarch, three shops I am close by all the time. Second Best uses the Clever dripper for their filter coffee, and I am one of those freaks who can ONLY taste paper when I have a Clever-brewed coffee, no matter how much rinsing, which filters, how hot the water is, what size, I taste paper, chemicals and a hint of coffee in the background. But, no matter how many excuses I offer, I should have been making more of an effort to get around the city and not overlook excellent shops like Second Best.
This morning’s coffee, which I picked up about a week and a half ago, is Second Best’s Ethiopia Shakiso. I paid $20+ tax for this bag and actually drank most of it as espresso. One thing I would like to see changed on Second Best’s website is the amount of coffee geekery available in their store pages about each coffee. I am sure I am unique in that way compared to the normal customer shops appeal to, but the more info I have available, the better, especially for my reviews. The Second Best website simply says this is a natural process coffee, heirloom varieties, that “tastes like sweet with mixed berries and a vanilla finish.” Shakiso is a woreda or district in the Guji Zone of the Oromia Region of Ethiopia. I am still trying to get a handle of how Ethiopia’s local governments work, but I would say their “regions” would be like our states, each region is divided into “zones” that I suppose would be like counties, and then the zones are full of smaller districts, too. Ethiopian coffee is mostly grown on very small plots of land by smallholder farmers who work together in cooperative “societies” and the societies generally own “factories” which are the places the coffee is collected, sorted, divided into lots, processed, and sent down the line. Coffee grows around 1950masl in Shakiso and many of the coffees grown there are organic.
This is a natural process coffee, which means the coffee cherries are picked, sorted by hand, and then spread out on raised mesh beds in the sun to slowly dry out, like big raisins. As the fruit breaks down, the seeds inside, what we refer to as coffee “beans,” soak up a lot of the flavors. Natural coffees tend to have more body, lots of fruit notes (especially berries, in the case of Ethiopian naturals) and lots of sweetness, but that comes at a bit of a price with ferment flavors that some people taste as “garbage”-like notes. Not me, thank goodness! In fact, the funkier the better!
For my filter samples, I’m using my tried and true pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper using a Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee bed during brewing. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and the total brew time came in around 4:30, which is a little long, but didn’t seem to affect this coffee negatively in any way.
The aroma from this cup is very floral and I was also getting hints of graham cracker. Taking a sip, this coffee reads differently from that “prototypical” natural Ethiopian cup full o’ berries I’m used to. This is a medium+ bodied coffee and there is fruitiness here, but I’m getting more baked sweetness and vanilla than expected. There is a creamy, dairy-like sweetness and mouthfeel to this cup that is sugary and reminds me a bit of a melted vanilla milkshake. I’m getting hints of graham cracker in the second half of the sip and in the finish. Ethiopian naturals are most famous for their berry notes and this Shakiso has some, but that is not the dominant flavor profile here. I can’t identify any one, single berry… there’s a hint of strawberry in the sip that takes over in the aftertaste, but I’m also finding raspberry here. And any time there are berry notes and florals in the cup together I think of blackberry. There’s a little lemon-lime acidity here to brighten the cup up and give some ceiling to this sweet cup. There’s minimal ferment here, at least to my palate, so I think this would be a relatively safe natural to try for people who don’t care for ferment notes, but then again, I love ferment flavors in coffee and so I don’t know how sensitive people are to that flavor. This cup finishes sweet and has a nice aftertaste of raspberry, strawberry, vanilla, and a hint of graham… and that unshakeable image of melted vanilla shake I can’t get out of my head! So, yeah, in other words, the aftertaste is like the sip, only not as wet! LOL I really enjoy this coffee as a pourover.
But Does It ‘Spro?
I actually started this coffee out as espresso and drank about 3/4 of it as this liquid gold, and it does a GREAT job as espresso. Pulled really short with long brew times (think 1:1 with crazy 40+ second times) it’s super intense and the lemon-lime is borderline synthetic like drinking pledge or concentrated 7-Up or Sprite (probably, I’ve never tasted any of that). In a more normal shot, using 19g in, 35-ish out in around 25-30 seconds, I was getting lots of lemon-like flavors, hints of florals, and graham cracker. It’s sweet, bright, balanced, and super-delicious. I don’t do dairy, so I can’t say how this coffee does as a milky. To me, the lemon-lime dominated the cup, so I would tend to assume that it would have a bit of a sour-milk vibe in a milk-based drink, but that doesn’t mean it does. Single origin espresso can be a little extra-finicky but I found this Shakiso to be pretty well-behaved and pretty consistent in flavors as well as shot reproducibility. I had one or two that channeled badly, but that is often user error and no fault of the coffee. Some coffees are darn hard to tame as espresso, but this wasn’t one of them.
Overall, this is a LOVELY coffee with tons of great flavors and I highly recommend it!
