Happy Monday! Let’s start the week off with new-to-us roaster, Vibrant Coffee Roasters, and their washed Ethiopian selection, Qirtira Goyo. If it tastes half as good as it smelled during brewing, we’re in for a treat!
Purchase this coffee for $19/10oz
VIBRANT COFFEE ROASTERS ETHIOPIA QIRTIRA GOYO
Happy Monday! This morning I have my first coffee from new-to-me (and possibly pretty new all around!) roaster, Vibrant Coffee Roasters, located in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. I don’t have a ton of info on Vibrant, but I have been following them for a while on Instagram. It looks like in March 2018 they were working on test roasts and starting their social media presence, so I’ll say Vibrant are a new roaster. They’re roasting on a Loring S15 Falcon, which is a high-tech beast of a roaster. The only other thing I was able to learn about Vibrant is that they consider Function Coffee Labs in Philadelphia to be their “sister company” and Function’s mainstay blend is roasted by Vibrant. I suspect Vibrant is owned by the folks who own Function Coffee Labs and is simply the roasting arm of the company, branded appropriately to allow them to get into other shops on wholesale accounts, but this is just speculation and it doesn’t really matter. I honestly don’t know how this side of the coffee business works, so I’m sure however the companies are set up and whatever their relationship is, makes sense to the people it needs to make sense to! I’m just excited to drink some new coffee from a new roaster!
My first taste of Vibrant’s coffee that I pulled out of the box they sent me is their Qirtira Goyo. This is a washed coffee grown in the Hambela area of the Guji region. For Ethiopian coffee fans, the word Guji usually causes some goosebumps and heavy breathing, especially when it comes to washed coffees! LOL Growing altitude is 1950-2200masl and this coffee is a lot consisting of coffees grown on many smallholder farmers’ plots. These are TINY beans and they just look so cute sitting in their bag from Vibrant! Vibrant Coffee Roasters give us tasting notes of, “Raspberry, Meyer lemon, jasmine” for this coffee.
I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 22g of coffee to 352g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin brewer. Filter is a Kalita 155 and my grinder is a Knock Aergrind. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and then took another 3:30 to brew, so a little slower than some with its dense beans, but not outrageous.
This coffee has a ton of jasmine floral notes coming off of it during brewing and it smells great. This carries over in the aroma from the cup, too, with definite promises of lemon to come in the flavor, too. Taking a sip, this is a medium-bodied coffee that is bright and lively right up front. Starting with the base, there is a syrupy sweetness anchoring this coffee with a raspberry jam-like vibe. Lemon candy acidity rushes in right behind the sweetness, both adding to the candy-like flavors in this coffee while also giving balance to that sweetness. As I continue enjoying this cup I continue to get jasmine and other florals in the aroma as well as some raspberry from the cup. This is a very fresh tasting coffee and by this I mean it all these florals, lemons and raspberries taste like they were picked at their peak and added into this cup straightaway. For as bright and, well, vibrant, as this coffee is, it really is a bit of a sugar bomb, too. It’s like drinking a lemon soda or eating a lemon bar and, of course, the lemon is what I really notice as far as flavors, but I “feel” the sugars on my tongue and palate just like with a really sweet dessert. Uh, yum! On the long aftertaste I get some lemon and berries in the front part of it and a very green tea-like note for the rest of the duration, as long as I can wait between sips (which, admittedly, isn’t that long!).
This is a great coffee! It definitely leans toward bright and citrusy, but it is also a really sweet and overall balanced cup. Any lover of washed Ethiopian coffees will be super-stoked to drink this coffee. I think Vibrant rotate coffees pretty readily and this one has been offered since at least July/August, so jump on it before it’s gone, which I suspect will be very soon! At $19 for 10oz this is not an inexpensive coffee by any standard, but good golly it tastes awesome!