Archive for May, 2011
Coava Coffee Roasters Ethiopia Kilenso
We moved to Portland just over seven months ago. It’s hard to believe. Time has gone by very fast. All in all, it’s been a blur. New jobs. New place to live. Great new friends to get to know. And of course, new gastronomic destinations to check out.
High on the list of things we were looking forward to in Portland was all of the local coffee roasters. Everyone knows about Stumptown, but once you get past them there are several small roasters (sometimes referred to as “micro roasters”) plying their trade here in town, including Cellar Door Coffee, Heart Coffee Roasters, Spella Caffe, Water Avenue, Public Domain, and our favorite of them all Coava Coffee Roasters. Each of these produces good to very-good coffee in a storefront/roasting facility, and the settings are unique to them all.
For instance, Coava is located on Grand Ave. in Southeast Portland, in an area you wouldn’t expect to find a niche coffee roaster. But they’ve partnered with Bamboo Revolution – a producer of bamboo flooring, cabinets, and doors – to craft a really beautiful space for their cafe. The relationship is clearly a symbiotic one. Bamboo Revolution fabricated the cabinets, bar, and tables for the coffee shop part of the space, while using half of the overall interior space to display their bamboo wares. The bamboo gives the space a really warm feeling, and provides a perfect backdrop for the artisan approach that Coava takes with their coffee.
Coava has made their mark with coffee in two separate ways. Firstly, they engineered the Kone coffee filter, designed to replace the paper filters used for Chemex coffee makers. The Kone is a laser-welded steel filter with a series of microscopic holes that are designed to filter the coffee while letting a certain amount of oils and sediment through. Coava calls the resulting coffee a hybrid brew, part Chemex and part French press. We’ve been using one here since December, and it produces a bright, clean, expressive cup that really puts the coffee (and its roast) on display.
One can only imagine that part of the motivation behind developing the Kone filter was to provide the perfect stage for their coffee to express itself. All of Coava’s coffees are small-batch, light-to-medium roasts, and typically represent what is seasonally available from farms and suppliers. In the shop, they always offer two coffees on Kone/Chemex drip, and two on espresso. Oftentimes, the same coffees are offered in both formats, giving you the chance to taste two different expressions of the same bean and roast. Across the board, we’ve found their coffees to consistently be really intriguing, often veering towards a tea-like style. They don’t always make good coffees for a weekday morning (when coffee is your stimulant of choice to wake a foggy brain), but they are excellent for a quiet start to a weekend morning.
Tasting Notes
This coffee is from the village of Kilenso Mokonissa in the Borena Hagermariam district, Sidama region. It’s an heirloom varietal grown at an elevation of 1750-1800 meters and naturally processed.
Right out of the grinder, notes of blueberry and black raspberry fill the air. In the cup, the most prominent note is blueberry pie, underscored by spice and oak notes. The palate has a creamy texture with minimal acidity supporting flavors of blueberry, melon, and toast. The lingering finish has lingering notes of berries and mint.
Very tasty, with the classic blueberry notes of Ethiopian coffees. If you happen to be in town and haven’t checked out Coava yet, you owe it to yourself to stop by.
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