Hammerhand Coffee Co. have just launched their new website that makes seeing and ordering all of their available coffees nice and easy, so to celebrate, let’s take a look at one of their customer favorites, Tero Farm from Ethiopia. Slurp!
Purchase this coffee for $17/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Light of Eärendil espresso | Colombia Camino Real
HAMMERHAND COFFEE CO. ETHIOPIA TERO FARM
Since my last Hammerhand review a week ago, the gang have launched their new website, which looks great, and the best part is that they have an online shop set up so you can see all of their available coffees and order online without having to call the shop. Excellent news, coffee geeks! Founder, Alex, and crew have been roasting their own coffee since around September, so this is a nice step in their progression. Hammerhand Coffee Co. is located in Liberty, Missouri, which is about 20 minutes north of Kansas City. I have yet to make it there for a visit, although it’s on my must-do list, and everyone I’ve ever talked to about Hammerhand loves the shop, the service, the people who work there and, now, their roasted coffee! Kansas City rules, except for days like this that are paralyzed by the “polar vortex.” Yikes!
This morning’s coffee, according to Alex, is a crowd pleaser and a favorite of Hammerhand customers. This is a washed coffee of mixed varieties (as is usually the case with Ethiopian coffees) grown by Tero Farm in the Odo Shakiso district of the Guji Zone. The word, Guji, usually gets taste buds vibrating for Ethiopian coffee aficionados, so we should be in for a treat. These coffees grow from 2072-2200masl. Hammerhand gives us tasting notes of, “Pink lemonade, orange blossom, honeysuckle, elderflower.”
I’m using my usual pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind and I’m also using a Melodrip to control my pours. I do a 44g bloom and use a glass stirring rod to make sure all the grounds are wet, then I pulse pour through the Melodrip and wait for the water to reach just above the coffee bed before I do the next pour. This coffee took around 3:25 in total to brew, including the bloom.
The aroma from this cup is great. Some florals, lots of sweetness that I hope comes through in the flavor. Taking a sip, my hopes are met and exceeded! Body on this coffee lands on the heavy side of light or the light end of medium. Right up front it has a honey-like sweetness that is followed into the middle of the sip by that lemonade note, which I think is a great descriptor for what I’m tasting. There is lemon candy acidity and even more sweetness that comes in with it, so lemonade with its dichotomy of sweet and citrusy is exactly what I’m tasting. I’m getting some floral notes around the mid sip, too, that I can’t necessarily identify separately, but that are definitely floral all the same. This adds a nice complexity to the cup and also complements the soft lemon acidity of this coffee beautifully. The late sip of this coffee is really juicy, which is a vague term, I know, but in coffee tasting implies a “wetness” to the coffee and a salivary response from the drinker’s salivary glands. When your mouth feels like all your tastebuds just opened up all at once and it feels like someone’s shooting you with a Super Soaker filled with coffee, then that’s “juicy!” LOL This cup finishes sweet and that light lemon candy acidity rolls into the aftertaste, which is very mild but leaves a sweet tanginess on my tongue. Talking to Alex, he was worried that Hammerhand’s relative inexperience with roasting would downgrade this coffee and I am pleased to say that worry was totally unfounded. This coffee holds up very nicely, too. I took my original notes shortly after I got this bag from Alex, and 4-5 weeks later I am revisiting the last of it and it’s every bit as good. YUM! A total winner, jump on this before they sell out!