Friday, April 2, 2010

New Single Origin!

Given my predilection for gabbing on and on about the machines I slowly dismantle and re-mantle every day, I'm sure it will surprise my growing readership (5 followers!) that I am going to spend this post talking about actual coffee, and not just the big pieces of metal whirring around it.

And I'm sure I'd be talking about either the grinder or our new water purification system (excitement!) if I hadn't been jolted from my mechanized stupor by a challenge posted to my wall (for those of you not familiar with facebook, your wall is not a physical fortification, but a forum in which you and your friends humiliate each other publicly) yesterday by my "friend" tore:

What I don't understand, is why anything BUT indonesian coffee is roasted... I'm just saying.


It poses a good question, along the lines of "why doesn't everybody ride a tall bike?" The truth is that, despite our intense genetic similarity to one another, not every one one of us enjoys the same thing.

Indonesians have a very distinct flavor profile that appeals to a lot of coffee drinkers. This is due largely to the "wet-hull" process that is unique to Indonesian coffee farms and mills and in which the fruit is pulped after picking, and allowed to rest for 1-3 days with mucilage still on the bean before it is stripped of its parchment and sun-dried (this description recapitulates Tom's of sweet marias in severely attenuated form). The resulting coffees are big-bodied, earthy, and only mildly acidic.

The wet-hull method, because it keeps the coffee at high moisture content for several days, often results in defective coffees, so they often perform poorly in cuppings (a standardized form of coffee evaluation and grading). However, cup quality often differs from actual drinking experience, and minor defects are overlooked next to the uniquely bold flavor of good indos.

Some coffee drinkers, though, still go for those clean-cup washed coffees that are all acid and sweetness - and for you (prepare yourself, I'm plugging product) Bittersweet is offering a new Single Origin Coffee from the Yirga Cheffe region of Ethiopia. Yirga Cheffe has grown famous for its pyrotechnic heirloom coffees, and this lot is exemplary: The fragrance and aroma are floral with notes of lemon, blueberry and peach tea, and the liquor is bright and sweet on the palate with a tea-like finish.

Not to gush, but Steve (the Emperor Palpatine to my Darth Vader) and I are very excited about this coffee's potential, and are glad to have nabbed some of it before it disappeared. So whether you ride a pennyfarthing or a trek madone covered in butterflies, come in and grab a cup and see what Yirga Cheffe has to offer.





2 comments:

  1. Boooo. I am right and you are wrong. I know this because I used to work at Peet's and this makes me an expert.

    Love,

    Tore

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ian, I am intrigued with your blog. I hope that this will reach and that I can be on your address list.

    Gramma

    ReplyDelete