Theodore’s Coffee Roasters in Owosso, Michigan sent me a box of goodies recently and this Ethiopian natural has just been begging for my attention since I saw it! Bonus, it was produced under the watchful eyes of my friends at Catalyst Coffee Consulting! Let’s check it out!
Purchse this coffee directly for $20/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Espresso Notorious
THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS ETHIOPIA SHONTA
As I was researching for this review, I learned that this coffee involves two of my favorite groups of people in coffee! Of course, it was roasted by Darwin Pavon and it’s an offering from Theodore’s Coffee Roasters, who I dearly love, and this coffee is the result of consulting in Ethiopia from Catalyst Coffee Consulting. Catalyst is co-owned by Emily McIntyre, who worked at Case Study Coffee Roasters in Portland when I started KC Coffee Geek. She was one of the first cafes/roasters to give me a boost and hook me up with coffee and it’s a warm memory, to say the least! It’s awesome to see excellent roasters like Theodore’s working with excellent sourcers/graders/consultants like Catalyst.
This morning’s coffee is a Grade 1 natural grown in the 1850-2300masl near the village of Hafursa in Ethiopia’s Yirgacheffe district. Natural coffees are dried with the cherry intact, like big raisins, and as the fruit dries and breaks down, it imparts usually fruity flavors, sweetness and body to the seeds inside, what we call coffee beans.
Most Ethiopian naturals are sorted by hand after picking, but this one was picked ripe and then floated in a tank of water. When this method is used, the coffee cherries that float to the surface are skimmed off and used for local commodity coffee, as they won’t pass muster as specialty grade. After multiple rounds of removing floaters, the cherries were sorted for density, then optically sorted and, finally, sorted by hand. According to Theodore’s, most coffees receive about 30 seconds of attention at each stop when being sorted along a conveyor belt like this. This lot was given 7 minutes at each stop! Finally, in their collaboration with Catalyst, the producers found that a screen size of 13-17 yielded the best flavors, so even that makes a difference! This is considered a special prep coffee, and, man, is it ever!
Theodore’s gives us flavor notes of, “passion fruit, grape candy and chocolate liquer” for this coffee. I am using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. I use a Knock Aergrind for grinding. The aroma on this cup has some fruit in it but also a lot of sweet chocolate notes, which for me is wild for a natural Ethiopian coffee! Taking the first few sips of this coffee, it’s clear to me this is not “the usual” when it comes to a natural Ethiopian.
The body of this coffee is on the heavy side of medium and has a creamy mouthfeel. There is a definite tropical fruit vibe to the sweet-tart fruity flavors that come through at the front of the sip. I don’t know when the last time I had passion fruit was, so I can’t comment on that, but it’s tropical and not pineapple or mango, that much I can say! This fruit note is sweet but has a bit of tartness, too. There is some lemon candy in the acidity as well, and this coffee seems to build in brightness with every sip I take if they’re in close succession. If I space them out more, the flavors are a little darker and the acidity tones down a little bit. Very cool! I drank a white grape soda yesterday and there are definite flavors in this coffee that I remember from that. There’s a hint of grape Jolly Rancher candy, too, in the background. This grapey note also comes out at the end of the sip as it transitions into the aftertaste. This cup has a slightly sweet finish and then there’s this grape/tropical note that starts the aftertaste that I can hardly put words on. It’s almost more of a feeling than a flavor… It feels like my taste buds contract and then open up and there’s a surge of flavor, then the long aftertaste. Wild! I get a little cocoa hint in the aftertaste, but not much, and for a natural, this is a clean coffee with regard to the amount of ferment. I personally like funky naturals that have pronounced ferment flavors, but I know some people don’t, and this one has very little, in my opinion.
This is a really interesting coffee. It has a lot going on I wouldn’t think of assiciating with Ethiopian naturals, which tend to be berry bombs with lemon or lime acidity (which I love, too). This one is more complex and leans much more toward grape and tropical flavors. It has more complexity than the average natural from Ethiopia and is just a simply different vibe altogether. This is an excellent coffee and considering the amount of work that went into it, coupled with the fact that the workers who produced it were paid a daily bonus that was 3x the size of their daily wage (which they were also paid), the $20 price tag on this coffee is a steal!