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.  

Welcome...Some Notes and Info

Quite frankly, I love coffee. Its more than just a caffeinated morning jolt. Coffee is much like an artist's pallet, subtle and bold differences in taste, aroma, acidity; all of which can change based on geographic region, harvesting methods, roast. My drink of choice is the venerable iced mocha, how that came to be, I couldn't say, but for me, the combination of chocolate and ice brings out the coffee flavors in a rather tasty way, highlighting the positives and negatives in the coffees that I brew. This blog is my effort to document my appreciation for coffee and to opine on the coffee beans I have tried.

Note: all the coffee reviews that you will find on this blog are my own opinions. I do not earn money from this blog and if I come across a coffee I do not like, I will express my displeasure. Any links that you see on this site are for informational purposes only, I am not responsible for what other folks say or do on their websites.

I currently use two different coffee brewers.

This first is a conventional french press by Bodum

I also use a Vesuviana stovetop espresso machine.

These aluminum espresso brewers are made in Italy and come different sizes. There is also an electric version. Having brewed many a good cup with mine, I recommend them to any coffee enthusiast and they can be purchased on Ebay for a decent price. In this type of brewer, water is heated in a chamber until, when hot enough, pressure forces the hot water up a collecting tube leading from the chamber to the receptacle where the water is forced through the coffee grounds.