This is one we get asked about a lot behind the bar, so it seemed worth writing down.
The Yirgacheffe we’re on at the moment is a washed lot from the Gedeb area, and it’s a delicate coffee — lots of jasmine and bergamot, a bit of stone fruit, quite tea-like in the cup. The whole job when roasting something like this is to not get in its way. It’s very easy to flatten all of that out with too much heat.
We run it on a fairly gentle profile. Charge temperature a little lower than our house filter roasts, a steady climb through the drying phase, and we’re watching the time between first crack and drop closely — we keep that window short so it stays bright. It comes off the roaster maybe fifteen to twenty seconds after first crack really gets going, a light-to-medium colour, no oil on the beans at all.
We rest it four or five days before we brew it. Straight off the roaster it’s a bit closed up. By day five the aromatics have opened right out and that’s when we put it on as the filter option in the cafe.
If you buy a bag, brew it as filter, not espresso. A 1:16 ratio, water just off the boil, and don’t over-agitate it.
Leave a Reply