Tag: Africa
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.
Related Posts:
Stumptown Coffee Roasters Burundi Kinyovu
Here in Portland we’re very gastronomically blessed. Within a couple miles of where we’re living now, there are several breweries, three distilleries, a couple of restaurants specializing in house-made charcuterie, one specializing in selling and serving incredible local cheeses, and a chocolate maker. Not to mention the slew of good restaurants and food carts. Phew! Oh, and a couple of coffee roasters.
Actually, a plethora of coffee roasters is more like it. The number of coffee roasters is right up there with the number of breweries in town, and their range in terms of size can be just as dramatic. There are small micro-roasters who are roasting a pound at a time, just as there are small nano-breweries brewing 1-barrel (31-gallons) at a time. And the quality can be just as variable as well. Let’s face it, not all of the breweries brew good beer, and not all of the coffee roasters are roasting great coffee. But on the whole, the quality is quite good, and often outstanding.
So it’s really a wealth of riches here in this regards. Which makes it tough each Saturday morning, when I make coffee and realize, “Oh crap! That’s the last of the coffee!!” (and for some reason, this seems to happen only on weekend mornings), to decide where to go to pick up a pound of coffee or two for the week. Literally, within walking distance are 5 good roasters.
In this landscape, a roaster such as Stumptown gets shunted to the side on many occasions. With roasters such as Coava, Water Avenue, and Cellar Door so close by, it’s easy to dismiss Stumptown as the corporate behemoth of the lot. Whether or not that’s true, I have to admit that the reality is that they do appear to go to great lengths to source their coffee and to work directly with farmers as much as possible. Their current offerings include fourteen “direct trade” coffees, of the total of eighteen that they have on offer. This includes three of their four blends, the components of which are all directly sourced.
And the coffees are typically quite good, and they range the spectrum of the world’s coffee-growing region. Stop by the Stumptown Annex, and you can get a single cup or a pound of any coffee they’re offering, including Central American, African, and Indonesian coffees. The coffees are all light-to-medium roasted, and do a good job of letting the flavor of the bean come through.
I don’t mean to write a post glorifying Stumptown. But, as I brewed a cup of coffee this morning and mulled over where to go pick up a pound later today, I found myself reflexively dismissing Stumptown. For no other good reason than they have 9 locations, sell Panama Esmerelda coffee at crazy prices, and are a verifiable hipster scene.
Tasting Notes
During a recent coffee-resupplying trip to the Annex, we had picked up two 1/2 pounds of the Burundi coffees they were offering, Bwayi and Kinyovu. I didn’t get around to writing up anything about the Bwayi, but really enjoyed the Kinyovu and so jotted down some notes.
The Kinyovu washing station is located in the Kayanza Province of Burundi. It’s a group of farmers that Stumptown has worked with for a couple of years, and their notes indicate that new and changed practices at the station have gradually improved the quality of the coffee. The coffee is grown at an elevation of 1700-1900 meters, and includes the Bourbon, Jackson, and SL varietals.
I tasted this after brewing the coffee using Coava’s Kone drip filter.
The coffee’s aroma is earthy, with spices and cocoa. The palate is supple with a gentle mouthfeel and very balanced acidity. The flavors are subtle, with a subdued presence harboring flavors of cocoa dust, oak, plums, and peppery spices. The finish is reminiscent of the aroma with notes of carob and nuts.
This was an enjoyable coffee. Not one that really spoke to me, and likely not one I’d get again. Both this and the Bwayi were very understated coffees with an earthy, somewhat spicy palate. Good, clean coffees, but not a flavor spectrum that calls out to me.
Related Posts:
Gimme Coffee Ethiopia Amaro Gayo Organic
I’ve been thinking about coffee quite a bit the past two days. It’s been a dominant theme in my thoughts, spurred in part by a conversation that I had about Intelligentsia Coffee with a co-worker. Without realizing it, I haven’t had Intelligentsia coffee for a long time. In the meantime I’ve tasted a bunch of great coffees, no doubt. But there is something about Intelligentsia that really captured my imagination back when I first began getting more serious about understanding coffee.
And so while I was sipping on this cup of coffee from Gimme, I began to think about why roasters such as Stumptown, Intelligentsia, Counter Culture, and Gimme get me so excited about coffee. It’s not necessarily that their coffees are better than any other roasters’. And it’s not the cool-factor that surrounds certain of them, Stumptown perhaps the most. No, it’s neither of those.
What is so exciting about these roasters is how passionate they are about coffee and the people who grow it. If you read their websites, and follow their blogs, what jumps out of the pages is enthusiasm for finding great coffees, establishing relationships with the farmers that grow them, and enriching the exchange between grower, roaster, and the home coffee maker. This kind of enthusiasm is always compelling to me. Whether it is a brewer, a winemaker, or coffee roaster the consistent theme in the people and companies that hold my attention is their commitment to the culture in which they operate.
Gimme is a great example. Yes, they source great coffees. And yes, they do a great job of roasting them. But they also work very hard to reach out to their customers, to educate them about where the coffees come from, the lives of the people who farmed them, and why the coffees taste the way they taste. They fill in the gaps between the many stories that come together to make up the culture of coffee. Through their words you can learn so much about the tapestry of coffee.
So while other coffee roasters also produce very good, and often great, coffees, it’s the companies who make this extra effort that make me interested in coffee at all. Without them, coffee would be another faceless, colorless product.
So what is the story behind this coffee? The beans were farmed in the Amaro Mountains in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia and processed at the Amaro Gayo mill. This mill is owned by Asnakech Thomas, the only female owner of a coffee mill in all of Ethiopia. Not only that, but she’s also the only female exporter in Ethiopia, and owns 250 hectares of coffee farmland as well. The result is that she has near complete control over the coffee that she produces, from farming to exporting.
This coffee was grown organically, and is wet-processed and sun-dried, as is typical for Ethiopia.
The nose has compelling notes of vanilla, coconut, blueberries, and huckleberries. One of the most wonderfully fragrant coffees I’ve had! The palate has a warm, mellow, slightly voluptuous body with a rind of acidity. Flavors of cocoa,raspberries, and blueberries are underscored by a hint of caramel. The finish is somewhat minty, with blueberries once again prominent.
What a remarkably enjoyable cup of coffee, the kind that just brings a smile to your face first thing in the morning. The berry flavors are very reminiscent of other Ethiopian coffees I’ve had, in particular a couple from Barrington Coffee Roasters. Naturally, my mind ends up roaming back to the questions I’ve been mulling over for so long regarding the role of terroir in coffee. A subject that I’ll have to come back to another time…
Related Posts:
Barrington Coffee Roasters Kenya AA Nyeri Kirimara Estate
Lately I haven’t been enjoying coffee at home as much as I’m used to. I’m not sure whether it’s the arrival of summer and with it warmer temperatures that make that hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning a bit less comforting. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten how to brew coffee, my measurements of water and grounds all awry. Or maybe my palate has moved on to different tastes for the time being, and I just can’t appreciate coffee right now.
Maybe I should start drinking tea…
…
Let’s not get crazy now. Fortunately, as an antidote to this coffee-malaise that I am in, I’ve opened up a new bag of Barrington Coffee Roasters Kenya AA Nyeri Kirimara Estate. I don’t think I’ve had any coffee from these folks in a while, and I was looking forward to giving their current Kenya offering a whirl. At any one time, BCR typically has just one offering from a particular country, with the current exception being their two offerings from Ethiopia Yirgacheffe. But that pair doesn’t really count, since one of them is their unique offering of the Beloya Selection Eight, a coffee produced by the Ninety Plus Coffee program and shipped directly to BCR’s offices. Generally, I appreciate their decision to not offer a boatload of coffees because that way you know the coffee will be both carefully chosen and very fresh.
This Kenyan AA is produced similar to most Kenyan coffees. The coffee cherries are first cleaned, before being wet-fermented, and then sun dried on raised beds. The coffee itself was grown on the Kirimara Estate in Nyeri and located at the foot of Mount Kenya, at an altitude of 5000+ feet. The varietals grown on this 250-acre estate include SL28 (90% of the crop) and Ruiru (10% of the crop).
The nose displays notes of carob, candied almonds, and bright red fruits. The palate has flavors of almonds, milk chocolate, and fresh currants. The coffee’s texture is soft and supple, supported by a gentle, brightening acidity. The finish is very long-lasting, with nutty, sweet flavors and textures opening up in layers.
While I still don’t think I hit the spot when making this coffee, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The flavors were warm and enticing, and the coffee was somehow very relaxing and easy to enjoy.
Related Posts:
Stumptown Coffee Roasters Rwanda Muyongwe
I really enjoy writing in this blog, and have since I began just over a year ago. It’s nice to have a forum for writing down all of the thoughts and ideas I have about these topics, the very same ideas or inspirations that lead me to drinking a specific glass of wine or cup of coffee.
But at the same time I find that I end up with a big backlog of drafts where I’ve written a few notes about something while drinking it, in the hope of returning to it at a later date to actually write the post. Sometimes I don’t return to it for weeks or more, by which time the motivation for writing about the glass at hand may have long since passed. Invariably I am disappointed by having missed the moment.
The reality is that my expectations are so high for each post. I try to set a hard limit of 1000 words per post, which is of course a ton. And I typically am reluctant to sit down and work on a post until I have the time and background information to really flesh out an idea. This approach ends up being somewhat prohibitive, since I just don’t have enough time to do all of the writing that I’d like to, especially now with summer in full swing.
So anyhow, this is a long way of talking myself into writing some more brief posts, so that I can both taste and write about a glass in the moment. Never mind working towards a hard limit of 1000 words, instead in these posts I’d like to aim for 250 words. Short, sweet, and timely.
This post (from this point forwards) is my first such attempt. This pound of coffee was the third of three bags that I bought from Stumptown a little while back, and the second of the two that were from Rwanda. After the previous coffee that I’d tried from this trio, the Rwanda Kanza, I was pretty excited about this one. It also was part of an ongoing series of African coffees that I have been very much enjoying as I try to get my head around the idea of terroir as expressed in this country’s several different coffee-producing regions.
The Muyongwe washing station is located in the province of Gakenke in northern Rwanda. This washing station earned some fame (of a sort) in 2007 when it’s coffee earned the highest price ($55/kilo) ever paid for a Rwandan coffee (at the time) after taking top honors at that year’s Golden Cup competition, Rwanda’s annual competition for coffee producers.
The washing station is part of the Tuzamure Kawa Muyongwe cooperative that is comprised of over 1200 small holder coffee farms. The cooperative first began operating in 2006, and at the Muyongwe station processes up to 297 tons of coffee each year. All of the cherries are of the bourbon varietal and is traditionally fermented in wet-tanks before being dried on 40 raised tables that are left uncovered allowing the beans to dry in the sun.
This was very much in the vein of the other Rwandan coffees that I’ve tasted thus far. The nose had scents of dark fruits, a strong, notable earthiness, and unsweetened baker’s chocolate. The palate was rich with smooth, dark bittersweet chocolate - very reminiscent of an 84% dark Ghana chocolate that I had the other day, intense chocolate with very little sweetness. This is a very softly textured coffee, held aloft by a gentle acidity that lends a mildly astringent element to the dominant chocolate flavors. The finish is warm, with melted milk chocolate and dark cherries combining in a medium-length finish.
Related Posts: