October 22nd The Coffee Report: The First Cupping.

While sitting in his office, our friend and excellent host, Dawit asked if he could setup a cupping. I jumped at the chance. He said a few words in Amharic to one of his employees and she left for the lab. When we entered the lab we were greeted by the familiar sights of all cupping rooms: grinder, hot water tower, cups, trays and sample roaster. What I wasn't expecting to see was her in the middle of roasting two barrels of coffee. I asked her what she was roasting and she pointed to a sample bag with a G2 Sidamo (exchange grade) inside. To pass the time while she finished, we inquired about each others sample roasting protocols. Their sample roasts last about 5-6 minutes as opposed to our 9-12 minutes. Almost no airflow was added during the roast and no gas changes are made. They usually stop at the Italian roast level (or darker), and occasionally they stop at French. For us in Seattle that would be considered too dark a roast level for a sample, but they have good reason for roasting this dark. Almost all domestically consumed Ethiopian coffee is below standard grade or off grade coffee. All higher grade coffees are shipped overseas to Europe, Far East Asia and the United States where they fetch a higher price. So to offset the poor quality of their coffee they tend to roast it very dark (at least by Western standards). This customary roast style is even applied to higher grade export coffee although this is slowly changing to lighter roast levels. After she dropped the G2 Sidamo she let me inspect them before grinding. Barrel one was an Italian roast: moderately oily, smooth surface, brown-black skin. Barrel two was somewhere between French and Italian roast: slightly oily, one or two surface wrinkles, dark brown color. Both had the obligatory quakers. By strict SCAA definition, the prevalence of quakers in coffees preclude it from being specialty coffee grade. Ironic since Ethiopian coffee is prized by many coffee professionals. Smelling the grinds I could easily detect quakers in two of the ten cups with the rest ranging from fruity chocolate to bland coffee. I wasn't expecting dynamic cups considering the coffee had no rest. I was curious about how they would handle the degassing such fresh coffee for the brew, so she showed me their trick. They only fill the cups half full for two minutes then top them off to finish the brewing. Smelling the half full cups proved nearly pointless, so much CO2 was coming off none of the five of us could smell anything. Around the four minute mark the crust began to offer its fragrance. At first the chocolate, milky sweet chocolate followed by hints of berries and floral orange. Breaking the crust was less helpful in unlocking this Sidamo than I had hoped. I'm guessing that when the crust broke another cache of CO2 burst free masking the other fragrances.
On the first pass, chocolate and quakers (in two cups). The second pass, more chocolate, moderate acidity surfaced and hints of berries. The third pass, more of the same but with no berries. We offered to help clean up but Ethiopian hospitality refused to even let us take our spoons to the sink. Grateful and happy we left for the Piazza in Addis.