Over the years, I’ve found that Theodore’s Coffee Roasters do a fantastic job with natural coffees, so I’m excited to taste what they did with this high-scoring Kochere from Ethiopia! It’s Monday, so let’s drink!
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THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS KOCHERE NATURAL
Theodore’s Coffee Roasters have been sourcing and roasting some of the best and most unique Ethiopian coffees I’ve had in a long time. I think this is because founder, Darwin Pavon, has been working with my friends at Catalyst Coffee Consulting, who have an intimate knowledge of coffee in general, but especially in Ethiopia. This morning I’m taking a look at their fresh Kochere Natural. I already know I’m going to like it because I’ve had a lot of Theodore’s coffee and it’s always impressive, so now that that’s out of the way, let’s find out just how good this one is!
This is a natural, aka dry process, coffee. Natural processing is when the coffee cherries are picked and then sorted and dried on raised mesh beds with the fruit still intact. The fruit slowly dries out and breaks down, like a big raisin, imparting fruity flavors, sweetness and body to the seeds within, what we call coffee beans. These are heirloom varieties grown by smallholder farmers in the Kochere woreda (district) of the Gedeo Zone. About 25,000 smallholder farmers bring coffee to one of around 15 washing/processing stations in this area. Coffee grows at 2050-2200masl here. The past year or so has been tough on the area as tribal uprisings damaged some of the washing stations and the area experienced the heaviest frost since the 1950’s, which will affect food and coffee production in the area for years to come. Theodore’s and Catalyst give us tasting notes of, “Madeira, mango lassi, and ripe peaches partner up with blackberry cobbler and cherry cola for a complex cup of berry and tropical fruit sweetness. Add to that a balanced acidity and smooth chocolate finish…”
Yum.
I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripped with a Knock Aergrind. After a 30 second bloom, my brews were hitting around the 3:30 mark in time.
This is a medium-light bodied coffee for me with lots of fresh strawberry notes up front and a sweeter, more baked-sweets-like finish. Up front there is a lot of strawberry in the aroma and this washes over my whole palate in the initial sip. It’s strawberry for days with a little bit of a floral note in there, too. Berries and florals together always signal blackberry to me, too, which I find to have a very floral note to them, and I get nice, ripe blackberry notes throughout this cup, too. There is an interesting acidity to this coffee that reminds of flavors of lemon candy but with the citric acidity that comes with it. Rather, the acidity “feels” more crisp and cool, like the malic acids associated with apples. So I get a lemony flavor note in the high end without the aggressive tones that citrus acids often have in coffee. Cool trick! The mid sip of this coffee has a lot of that lemon note and brightness and tons of blackberry for me. The end of the sip is super chocolatey to my palate, landing somewhere right between milk chocolate and semisweet. This coffee has a slightly sweet finish for me and then a relatively short and light aftertaste with a little bit of all these components in it for me. I find more strawberry flavors in the warmer cup with a peach-like sweetness and peachy notes in the finish and aftertaste, for sure, but as this coffee cools I the berries lean much more heavliy toward blackberry for me, and I lose a lot of that peachy tone in the cooling cup, too.
This is another fantastic Ethiopian coffee from the Theodore’s and Catalyst partnership. It’s perfectly balanced and delicious with a lot of familiar flavors and although this coffee has a lot of complexity, it doesn’t detract from the drinkability at all. I get minimal ferment from this coffee, which scored an incredible (especially for a natural) 92 on the cupping table, so people who avoid naturals because they don’t like ferment notes will probably be fine with this one. I don’t know that I really get any from this cup. A FANTASTIC example of how structured and refined properly handled naturals can be. A beautiful coffee!