On this fine morning I am trying out an Ethiopian natural coffee from new-to-me roaster Yellow Dog Coffee Company in Norman, Oklahoma. Let’s check it out!
Purchase this coffee directly for $16.50/12oz
YELLOW DOG COFFEE COMPANY ETHIOPIA SIDAMO
Yellow Dog Coffee Company was started by Rob and Sereta Wilson on their 20 acre farm in Norman, Oklahoma. Rob roasts on a Diedrich roaster on-site at the farm, which they share with a host of animals and also houses a dog rescue and canine daycare business (I’m guessing that’s where the Yellow Dog name came from!). 12% of the profits from Yellow Dog Coffee Company go to Annie’s Rescue Foundation that supports the needs of animals in Norman’s city animal shelter. Having two rescue dogs myself, this is a big issue for me and I really like the idea that Rob supports his community’s canine population with his coffee.
This first coffee I’m trying from Yellow Dog is their medium roast Ethiopia Sidamo. This is a lot of heirloom varieties grown by smallholder farmers in the Sidama Zone of Ethiopia. This is a natural coffee, meaning it is picked and sorted by hand and then dried slowly on raised mesh beds with the coffee cherry still intact, like big raisins. This tends to impart more fruity flavors to these coffees. Growing altitude is 1700-1900 meters above sea level.
I’m using my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filter. My grinder is a Knock Aergrind. As I weighed my beans out I did remove three very light-colored beans from the mix before grinding. I’m always a little paranoid of really light beans in a relatively dark roast and it never hurts to err on the safe side. It doesn’t take much of a defective bean to ruin the whole cup, so scanning for general uniformity is always a good idea.
Aroma on this coffee is berry jam, all the way. Maybe some dark plums that have been cooking down, too. Taking a sip, this is a medium-full bodied coffee with lots of familiar flavors that I’m finding to be very enjoyable on a cloudy, rainy morning here in Kansas City. True to the nose on this coffee, there are plenty of berry and plum notes in the flavor of this coffee, too. I’m having trouble parsing out a specific berry note… it’s more like a berry jam made from a bunch of different types. There is a nice caramel sweetness to the base of this coffee, too, and with its medium roast, there isn’t a lot in the way of acidic high notes in here. With the darker roast and muted acidity this coffee definitely leans hard toward sweet flavors, but it stops shy of being cloying or too sugary, but it’s right on the precipice. This will do well as a cold brew and it would make a nice post-meal dessert coffee, too. I imagine the cream and sugar crowd would love this coffee, too! As the cup cools I pick up hints of lemon candy in the background, but less than if this coffee was a light roast. There is a bit of roastiness in the second half of the sip and finish, and a touch of bitterness that I’m guessing is from the roast level, too. That actually does balance the sweetness in the cup nicely and tempers all those sugary flavors from the fruits and caramels.
Overall, I really like this coffee. I do love lightly roasted naturals so I can taste all the nuances in the cup, but there’s nothing wrong with a darker roast, either. In many cases the fruitiness of the cup is lost almost completely when Ethiopian naturals are roasted too far, so Rob has done a great job pulling out a ton of sweetness while still maintaining enough origin character for a coffee geek like me. The fact that sales of this coffee go to support dogs in need is icing on the cake! A great introduction to Yellow Dog Coffee Company and I’m looking forward to sharing another coffee from Rob and Sereta with you next week!