Ethiopian Peaberry SCFCU by Blue Bottle Coffee Co.

Today, I'm brewing some terrific coffee from Ethiopia.  Blue Bottle Coffee, named one of the best coffee roasters in the United States in 2013, recently offered Ethiopian Peaberry from the Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (SCFCU) in 16oz bags. Now this offering combines two of my favorite things: Ethiopian coffee and nature's nuclear power plant known as the peaberry.

The bean only has one coffee cherry instead of the normal two so it's a compact little bugger filled with highly concentrated energy. Blue Bottle has light roasted these miniature coffee beans and not only do they pack an intense flavor, the coffee packs a wicked punch. Opening up the brown paper recyclable bag, bearing the simple Blue Bottle mark, my nose was met with a near tropical sweet melon aroma and that flavor transfered into the actual drink.

The coffee is very light but doesnt have the heavy citrus body that characterizes some Yirgacheffe coffee beans; something I am not the biggest fan of.  Blue Bottle's Ethiopian Peaberry doesn't emit the cherry tartness that I've noticed in several other Ethiopian offerings, but it does have a smattering of chocolate underlying the tropical taste. The transition from tropical flavors to cocoa as I worked through the coffee was really a fantastic combination that played off each other marvelously. The caffene punch in this coffee is stronger than an Iron Man comptetion.  It will keep you awake during the routine of a long workday and will leave you with a hankering for another cup.

It looks like Blue Bottle is no longer offering this coffee at the moment, but they do have other single origina selections from Africa that are no doubt excellent.

Ethiopian Guji Shakiso By Metropolis, A Magical Coffee Experience

Metropolis Coffee has been one of Chicago's gateway's to fantastic types of coffees from around the world, either by blend or single origins.  I have greatly enjoyed most of their offerings.  Visitors to this blog can probably pick up that I love Ethiopian coffees.  Maybe its because I love baked goods (I can hear my dentist cringe), but fruit and chocolate tinged coffee flavors really get my palette going.

Metropolis recently offered Ethiopian coffee from the Guji zone of Oromia in the south of Ethiopia.  This coffee is wet processed, not dry, and according to Metropolis' product sheet is grown at elevations of 1700-1850 meters.

Metropolis, like their other products, offered these beans in 12oz valved packages.  The beans are typical in size for geographically similar beans, (smaller sized), and are more lightly roasted.  Dark roasting beans like this would be blasphemous!!!

This coffee was absolutely fantastic and might be the best offering from Metropolis I have brewed to date.  It retains some of the light flowery and citrus notes of Yirgacheffe sourced coffees but Guji is distinctively sweeter and has a bite of chocolatiness to it.  I thought the flavors were much more interwoven and complex than the description on the package and I have no problem with that.  It was a great surprise when the coffee was brewed.  I primarily brewed in my Vesuviana for this.  Perhaps this year I will splurge on a Chemex.  

Guji goes in my top-5 coffees to date hands down.  Metropolis is to be commended for this offering.  For those of you in other parts of the United States where Metropolis cannot be purchased, I urge you to seek out your local artisan roasters about Guji Shakiso.  Other small roasters do offer these beans and if you want a magical coffee experience, you had best try this before it's out of season.