Yirgacheffe Dark Roast Coffee Beans Concentration

FrontStreet Coffee · Deep Roasted Yirgacheffe Coffee Beans

Roasting coffee demands focus. Get distracted, and you may find yourself roasting a fresh batch of Yirgacheffe while the roaster's temperature gauge reads 229 degrees, which means the beans have already entered the middle to late stages of second crack.

And so we have these deep roasted Yirgacheffe beans, which look darker and smoother than a light roast. Once ground, the rich aroma of a medium-roasted Yirgacheffe powder turns into something somewhat bitter and burnt.

After drip-brewing the deep roasted Yirgacheffe, I found it actually quite good. Yirgacheffe beans are enchanting at 17-18, full of youthful, natural vitality; by 24-25 the flavor becomes simple and clear, with a hint of burnt bitterness that turns very persistent.

Life is like that: even when you try your hardest, bitterness tends to predominate in the end.

Under natural gravity drip brewing, grounds that aren't fine enough often lead to under-extraction. If the beans aren't ground finely enough, it's simply wasteful.

The layered complexity of Yirgacheffe's edge, of course, is something other coffee beans should share too.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For drinkers who want to explore Yirgacheffe beyond a single roast level, FrontStreet Coffee suggests its Washed Yirgacheffe. It is known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a tea-like body, and its accessible price has made it the classic first specialty bean for many people. Yirgacheffe is a small town in southern Ethiopia at roughly 1,700-2,100 meters, where coffee trees grow above 1,800 meters, making it one of the world's highest coffee-growing regions; the cup is light and elegant with bright, clean acidity.

FrontStreet Coffee's Sun-dried Red Cherry offers a different route. It uses whole ripe cherries given a natural process, so it keeps the classic Yirgacheffe character while gaining tropical fruit aromas, with citrus-like acidity, a berry-juice mouthfeel, honeyed sweetness, and a creamy smoothness.

To brew the washed Yirgacheffe, use a V60 with 15 g of coffee and a 1:15 ratio at 90-91°C, ground to EK43s setting 10, or about fine-sugar size with an 80% pass-through rate on a #20 standard sieve. Pour 30 g of water for a 30-second bloom, then add 95 g over about one minute, and when the water level drops to two-thirds of the coffee bed, pour the remaining 100 g, finishing the brew between 2:00 and 2:10.