Theodore’s Coffee Roasters Ethiopia Worka

I’m finishing out this run of excellent Ethiopian coffees from Theodore’s Coffee Roasters with their Worka, a washed coffee from the south-central Worka village. I’ve really been enjoying the flavors in these coffees (reviews are linked below), so the hardest choice for you will be not buying all of them at once!

Theodore’s Coffee Roasters

Purchase this coffee directly for $19/12oz (and free shipping!)

Theodore’s Coffee Wush Wush review

Theodore’s Coffee Reko review


THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS ETHIOPIA WORKA

I’ve drunk a lot of Theodore’s Coffee now and it’s so good! Darwin roasts for sweetness and balance and he is able to coax beautiful flavors out of every coffee that passes through his roaster. The consistency is excellent and you can taste the results of this dedication in every sip! Theodore’s recently sent me a few of their current Ethiopian coffees. The Wush Wush was super light and fresh and “cool” with notes of cucumber, honeydew, lemon candy, orange water… it was delicate and unique and really blew my mind! The Reko was more of a standard (albeit, a great example) washed Ethiopian flavor profile with raspberry lemonade, lemon candy and limeade in a delicious package. This morning, I’m checking out the Worka, which is a washed coffee grown by smallholder farmers around the Worka village and processed at Girma Wondimu. Worka is part of the Oromia region of south-central Ethiopia, near all the big coffee-growing names any Ethiopian coffee aficionado would recognize! This is another coffee that came from Dominion Trading and my friend, Emily’s Catalyst Coffee. Emily and her family spent several months in Ethiopia this year and these coffees are the result of their growing personal relationships with the coffee growers in that country.

Theodore’s gives us tasting notes of, “lemon zest, lemonade, fresh raspberries, nectarine, peaches, cascara and lemon balm” for this coffee and it sounds awesome! I used my standard pourover setup for my cups of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. Handground grinder was set to 3 and I used Third Wave Water as always!

This is a coffee to definitely let sit after brewing so it will cool down some. It opens up a lot as it cools off. I’m greeted by a medium-light bodied cup with lots of lemony notes right at the front of the sip as well as a fruity sweetness holding down the bottom end of this coffee. For me, this is definitely the most subtle of the three Ethiopian coffees Theodore’s sent. There is raspberry and lemon candy with some sharper, more defined lemony “zings” in the flavor (lemon zest is a good call on Theodore’s Coffee’s part). Although I don’t necessarily get a lot of overt peach and nectarine flavors, there is definitely a “feel” to this coffee that reminds me of “stone fruit” sweetness. It’s hard to describe… sweet, clean, with hints of tartness. The flavor of this sweetness is quite neutral, so I’d go so far as to say it’s more of a white peach than a more strongly flavored yellow peach. This coffee has some black tea notes in the finish and aftertaste, but it is minimal in that slightly astringent, dry feeling a lot of these coffees can leave on my tongue. Instead it has a mostly sweet finish with that lemony acidity hitting my cheeks as the sip finishes out. This coffee has a little bit of it all for a washed coffee from this area: peach, raspberry, lemon, tea, but all the flavors are relatively subtle and melange into a nice, harmonious, pleasant cup!

This is, as expected, a very enjoyable coffee. It’s hard for me to get past the uniqueness and specialness of that Wush Wush, and the Reko wasn’t terribly different from this Worka, but it was more aggressive in the presentation of its delicious flavors. This is a wonderful coffee, too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s definitely more subtle than the other two. With free shipping, it never hurts to pick them all up at different times. Theodore’s Coffee Roasters offer A LOT of different choices and I haven’t found an unlikeable coffee in the lot yet!