A Question from the Home Roast List
Anyone know when the Ethiopian Harrar is obtainable (in season)? I am interested in seeing if I can pull the blueberryBlueberry flavors in coffee take different forms. Dried blueberry was something we first encountered in natural Harar coffee from Ethiopia. It seemed to be most potent in fresh... notes out of the bean. – Kevin
It’s late in the season now, and basically it was only the first arrival that had over-the-top blueberry. Our special prep lot was balanced, but didn’t have extreme berry notes. I commissioned that special lot preparationPreparation refers to the dry-milling steps of preparing coffee for export: hulling, grading, classifying, sorting.: Preparation refers to the dry-milling steps of preparing coffee for export: hulling, grading,... on the Green Stripe as an experiment, but also because I had a feeling it was a down year for Harar in general. I think it was, overall, because I cup a lot of lots and throughout the season they just kept dropping in quality, and so many were simply dusty tasting, hay, dry earth.
Anyway, you can get blueberry from the EthiopiaEthiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, or a coffee cultivar: Ethiopia, or more specifically the Empire under Haile Selassie, was known as Abyssinia. The name is Latin, derived from... Dry ProcessDry process coffee is a method for taking the fruit from the tree to an exportable green bean. The whole intact coffee cherry is dried in the sun... Sidamo lot we have now. This is from a new exporter I am trying to work with (he is a pain because he can’t get anything done on time) however the coffee he shipped was outstanding. Obvious second recommendation is the Idido Misty Valley which is an unbelievable coffee in terms of fruit. Wet-process Ethiopias have been great this year but those don’t have berry notes in general, more citrus and floralFloral notes in coffee exemplify the connection between taste and smell. Describing the taste of a specific flower is near impossible...we always default to “it tastes like it.... I start to look at incoming new cropRefers to fresh shipments of green coffee within the first month or two of the earliest arrivals ... not quite the same as Current Crop, which means the... Harar in January and February (pre-shipment samples). The problem with Pre-Ship samples from Africa is they never arrive tasting the same- huge flavor shifts. So you can‚Äôt count on knowing much in advance of arrival lots, and you just have to source them widely and roast them all to find the gems.
– Tom
