How is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee? Introduction to the Proper Way to Brew Yirgacheffe

FrontStreet Coffee - Yirgacheffe Characteristics and Tasting Guide

When the conversation turns to coffee, it inevitably begins in Ethiopia. The birthplace of the species has held a privileged place in the specialty industry for generations, and its beans appear on the menus of coffee bars worldwide.

Ethiopian coffee is anything but uniform. Flavor shifts noticeably from one growing region to the next, and again between micro-regions and even individual farms. What nearly all of it shares is quality: the country grows almost exclusively Arabica, and the best of it is superb. Ethiopia's geography suits the crop unusually well. Coffee is cultivated mainly in the southern highlands at altitudes of 1,100 to 2,300 meters, across districts that include Harar, Limu, Djimma, Sidamo, Kaffa, Yergacheffe, and Wellega. The soils in these areas are well drained, slightly acidic, red, and loose. There is a single harvest each year: white coffee flowers appear on the branches in March and April, the cherries then swell, and the red fruit is picked from September to December. New-crop coffee begins to be exported from November to December.

Natural processing rounds out the fruit character. Compared with washed coffee, a well-made natural retains the fresh lemon acidity and floral lift while adding sweetness and body. Honey-processed lots from Ethiopia are appearing more and more often, and producers who sell directly to the market are achieving remarkable results with them.

Workers at the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers' Cooperative Union processing plant sort green coffee beans.

Yirgacheffe is one of the most distinctive coffees in the world, an outstanding representative of African washed coffee and a long-standing favorite of connoisseurs. Grown as washed, high-quality Arabica, it handles a wide range of roast levels and shows off fresh, bright floral and fruit aromas with a clean, consistent bean appearance.

Much of Yirgacheffe's popularity has been carried by the specialty coffee movement. Its citrus character, wrapped in jasmine fragrance, gives a distinctive, almost wine-like acidity that made it a rebellious flavor in its day. Traditional Italian dark roasting removes that acidity along with the citrus and fruit, so Yirgacheffe became the standard-bearer of floral, fruit-forward coffee instead.

Taste

Taste is what the tongue detects. Coffee flavors fall into four categories: sour, sweet, bitter, and salty, with some tasters adding a fifth, umami. Perception shifts from sip to sip, sometimes sour, sometimes bitter, partly because a small sample of coffee cannot cover the whole tongue and different areas respond differently to each basic taste.

Body

Body, simply put, is the tactile sensation of the liquid moving across the tongue, what we also call mouthfeel. The treatment of body in The Coffee Equation is unusually clear on this point.

Flavor

When we taste coffee we should not stop at "it's delicious"; we need to say where the deliciousness lies. Descriptions such as "lemon-like acidity" or "milk-candy sweetness" communicate far more than a single word of praise.

Knowledge Extension: Flavor is the hardest of the three to master. The aroma given off by the grounds, and the aroma that returns through the nasal cavity after swallowing, produce different impressions in different people. No one can teach flavor identification verbally. Every method is the same: smell, calibrate, remember, repeat.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

FrontStreet Washed Yirgacheffe Daily Bean. FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe is the classic introduction to the region. It is known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a clean tea-like finish, and its accessible price has made it the first specialty coffee for many drinkers.

Yirgacheffe is a small town in southern Ethiopia within the Sidamo zone, sitting at roughly 1,700-2,100 meters, with the trees planted above 1,800 meters. The land has been wetland since ancient times, and the region's highly recognizable white florals and lemon-citrus acidity have made the name a byword for Ethiopian specialty coffee.

For brewing, FrontStreet Coffee suggests a V60 dripper with 90-91°C water, 15g of coffee at a 1:15 ratio, and a medium-fine grind (EK43s setting 10, about the texture of fine sugar, roughly 80% passing a No. 20 sieve).