JulieCraves

Africa / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Counter Culture Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Ambessa

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #4.

The coffee: Mark Overbay of Counter Culture Coffee was kind enough to include a bag of their Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Ambessa with my last order. Yirgacheffe is an area in the southern Ethiopian Sidamo region. Like most other Ethiopians, it is grown on small, diverse forest plots, organic and shade grown. Beans here are said to be small and elongated, with a unique flavor. This coffee is wet processed, then sun dried.

The beans: The roast was lighter than we’ve seen in other Ethiopians, with some chaff still showing in the crack of the beans, a medium roast or city/city+.

Brewed: We were expecting huge, complex flavors after the Rocket Sidamo, but that was a dry-processed coffee.  This coffee was far more subtle, with flavors than just danced on the tongue and melted away.  While most of us found it bright, clean with a touch of wine or citrus, the flavors were so fleeting it was a little hard for us amateurs to get a handle on them.  It lingered a bit, with a buttery mouthfeel.  Star[bucks]ling was the first to distinctly taste raw honey.

This coffee might be better as espresso, as indicated by messages on the Home Barista Forum. bread coffee chocolate yoga also struggled a bit to get all the fruit flavors in the cup brewing the Ambessa, although she used a Chemex and french press, not a drip.  We are sorry that we didn’t try it as espresso, and that due to our conflicting schedules we were unable to sample it until nine days past roasting.

Other opinions:
Yirgacheffe coffee is often described as having jasmine and other floral notes, and being sweet and honey-like. The Counter Culture description reads:

The pronounced lemon-blossom-honey flavor is accompanied by other tropical fruit flavors, like mango. The floral character of this coffee is overwhelming, and brings to mind roses and honeysuckle. The fruity nature and light body of this coffee make it the perfect summer coffee.

bread coffee chocolate yoga used the terms winey, tea-rose floral,  citrus, and carmelly-honey-syrupy.   Sounds like we had the elements, although they were not as pronouced as we would have expected.

A Coffee Geek forum member found lemon blossoms, roses, and honeysuckle.

Bottom line: I came across a handy reminder at Coffee Cuppers: “Great coffees come in two varieties: those which taste like coffee, and those which don’t.”  These are considered classic coffees.  We considered the Ambessa a classic coffee.  At least for us, it didn’t have a lot of unusual flavors or characteristics, but it was a very enjoyable cup. We’re rating this 3 motmots.

When to drink this coffee (field oriented): Our association with raw honey indicates this is a bright brew to enjoy after a day at the bee hives harvesting the summer crop of honey.  Do not try drinking through a bee suit.  It just plain doesn’t work.

Coffee awards and competitions / Coffee news and miscellany / Retail and specialty roasters

Roast Magazine Roaster of the Year 2005/06

The July/August 2006 issue of Roast Magazine announced it’s winner of Roaster of the Year: Oren’s Daily Roast.  Members of the Roaster’s Guild submitted coffees for tasting by their executive council, who picked their top 10.  These were voted on by attendees of the Specialty Coffee Association of America show in April.  Congrats to the winners. Here are the top ten with the coffee submitted, and notes on sustainable offerings.

  1. Oren’s Daily Roast (NY), Ethiopian.
  2. Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea (VT), Kenyan. Carries FT and organic coffees.
  3. Gridge’s Coffee & Roasting (TN), Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. No online retail.
  4. (tie) Batdorf & Bronson (WA), Colombian. Carries FT, organic, and relationship coffees.
  5. (tie) Lexington Coffee Roasting (VA), Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Carries FT, organic, and certified shade coffees.
  6. Ecco Caffe (CA), Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Carries FT and organic coffees.
  7. Cafe Imports (MN), Tanzania Songea. Wholesale.
  8. Cuvee Coffee Roasting (TX), Kenya AA Top. Carries FT, organic, and certified shade coffees.
  9. Caffe Pronto (MD), Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Carries organic, and certified shade coffees.

Look at all those African coffees!  I’ll have to roll out a review of an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe later today!

Coffee reviews / Latin America

Hacienda La Esmeralda Jaramillo Especial

I will be writing in the future about the Cup of Excellence and the Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality award programs for specialty coffees, and the role they can play in bringing attention to small farms, roaster relationships, and quality sustainable coffees.  Another one of these competitions, which it is timely now for me to mention, is the Best of Panama competition, sponsored by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama. For the last three years, one farm has placed first in this competition, Hacienda la Esmeralda, in Chiriqui province on the slopes of Volcan Baru in western Panama (click map to enlarge).

This story is exceptional in several ways.  First, the bean and coffee are unique.  Second, this coffee has set records at auction, with the 2006 lot being the first green coffee to sell for over US$50 a pound green and US$100 a pound roasted.  I’ll give a little background here, because the cash-poor but burningly curious C&C coffee tasting panel raided their piggy banks and sprang for a half-pound of Esmeralda from Intelligentsia.

The Esmeralda Jaramillo Especial story: Hacienda La Esmeralda was purchased by the Peterson family in 1996. Previously, different coffee varieties had been planted about the farm, which has altitudes range from 1,450 to 1,700 meters.  Daniel Peterson cupped beans from all over the farm, and discovered the pleasant citrusy flavor present in the mixed beans from the farm as a whole were being flavored by some outstanding beans from a 50 hectare plot in one small valley at the high end (1550 m) of the farm: the Esmeralda Especial.

The microclimate of this valley is quite cold.  The bean is an arabica variety called Geisha or Gesha, a long-bean type with Ethiopia heritage brought to Panama in the 1960s via Costa Rica. It is low-yielding — 50 to 100 (60 kg) bags a year — in part because of the long “internodes” or space between the beans. It is likely a combination of the climate, bean, and (wet) processing that brings us this unique cup.

Auction price history: The Esmeralda set price history in the 2004 online green coffee auction, sponsored by the the Specialty Coffee Association of America. That lot sold for US$21 a pound and was huge news in the coffee industry (the average lot goes for about US$4 a pound). This year the lot, of five 60-kg bags, sold for US$50.25 a pound.

The lot was purchased by the Small Axe Coffee Alliance (Sweet Maria’s, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Intelligentsia Coffee Roasters, Groundwork Coffee Company, and the Norwegian company Kaffa).  The first out of the gate with a public offering of roasted coffee was Intelligentsia. Sweet Maria’s offered the green beans as a set along with beans from the second and third place winners, Bambito Estate and Carmen Estate.

The farm and environmental sustainability: Hacienda La Esmeralda is Rainforest Alliance certified, and their coffee won first place Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality in 2004 and 2006. The farm is not certified organic, and does use glyphosate as a herbicide, and some fertilizers, according to the “Sustainability” portion of its web site. Use of pesticides is not specified, but it sounds like they are usually avoided.

The page indicates that there are about 75 large trees per hectare which add to the leaf litter of the coffee plants, and there is a photo of coffee growing under shade in their photo gallery. The farm does not prune trees during bird nesting or migration season.

As an ecologist, I would like to comment on a statement on the page: “A producing farm undoubtedly has a higher animal biomass than virgin forest as well as a higher photosynthetic rate. It is producing’ — it is not in a resting equilibrium as is a forest.”

Animal biomass is not a relevant yardstick of sustainability (although I don’t know if that’s the point that was being made, necessarily). Here’s why: A cattle pasture, with cattle, would have animal biomass that far exceeds tropical virgin forest of comparable size, but one could hardly say that is a makes it a better or more sustainable use of the land.  Likewise, photosynthetic rates themselves alone don’t have a lot of meaning. Fast-growing plants have higher photosynthetic rates, which are also influenced by light, temperature, vapor pressure deficit, and carbon dioxide.  Fast or slow, one is not “better” than another. And I’d venture to say that a tropical forest — any forest for that matter — is never at a “resting equilibrium” but is always dynamic, and always “productive”!  I’m inclined to take exception to the statement “Enormous tracts of virgin forest have little to do with sustaining people…”  As “the air conditioner of the earth,” tracts of virgin tropical forest sustain us all through many important ecosystem functions.

That being said (and whatever the intent), this is not obviously not sun coffee, it is RA certified, and the web site does note other environmentally-friendly practices. Stay tuned for our impressions of this highly-touted bean!

Coffee regions

Attention: East Timor

I’d like to occasionally profile a coffee-growing country, where the current situation merits special attention from coffee consumers, whose purchase of sustainable coffee from the country can provide extra benefit.  I’ll try to include these items: the current status, why your purchase will help, cultivation and characteristics of coffee in the country, and some links to sustainable coffees.  You can usually expect the C&C tasting panel to follow up with a review of one or more coffees from the country.

I will start with East Timor, half of one of the easternmost coffee-growing islands in Indonesia.

Situation: Once a Portuguese colony, which was invaded by Indonesia in 1975, only a few days after declaring independence. For over 20 years, conflict and clashes gripped the island as the Timorese resisted the Indonesians.  East Timor joined the UN as an independent nation in 2002, but clashes continue, currently involving violence between eastern and western soldiers that is at a crisis stage requiring international intervention. Some background can be found at BBC News.

The role of coffee: East Timor’s economy has been crippled by the ongoing fighting, and its people are among the poorest in the world.  Coffee is one of the most important mainstays of the East Timorese economy.   In 1994, with help from USAID, the Cooperativa Cafe Timor was organized, and is now the largest single-source producer of organically certified coffee in the world. It has 20,000 farm families and employs another 3,000 local people during processing time, about 25% of the population! Starbucks has been a major customer of East Timor coffee; it was used
in their Arabian Mocha Timor blend, which is currently listed as out of stock.  May and June are harvesting time for coffee in East Timor, and the current wave of violence has nearly stopped production, with coffee not making it to the processing mills, many of which are unmanned due to the fighting.

Coffee Review notes: “Buying a Timor coffee at this moment in history means making a small but valuable gesture of support for one of the many peoples of the world caught up in sectarian and political conflict.” Not only does buying specialty coffee from East Timor help the people, it will also help the environment, adding value to biodiverse farmland when so much forest and farmland was napalmed and destroyed in the war.

About East Timor coffee: There are two main growing regions in East Timor, Aifu and the higher altitude Maubesse. The bean grown most often in Timor is a natural hybrid between arabica and canephora (robusta), often called Hibrido Timor or some variation (it is also used to cross with the Caturra variety to make Catimor, which is higher yielding than either parent, but not as good as either one; more on botanical varieties here).

East Timor has some rugged terrain and a very hot climate.  Coffee is always grown under shade, the only way the plants would survive.  Coffee is grown on small plots, in a primitive and nearly wild state. Because the farmers have not been able to afford chemicals, East Timor coffee is organic.

Coffees are wet-processed in the new mills.  However, the 2006 crop is in question due to the current civil unrest described above, and it may be that coffee that comes from East Timor from this season will be in limited supply and dry processed.

Variously described as sweet and nutty, medium-bodied, with a sweet cedar finish, cleaner than Sumatrans, with more acidity than Javas, and generally clean and mild. You can read some reviews of older crops at Coffee Review.

Map image: pbs.org.