The green
Sack tag · Guji, Ethiopia
- Producer
- Alaka mill, 210 delivering farms across two kebeles
- Altitude
- 1,900–2,050 m
- Variety
- Local landrace selections
- Process
- washed
- Harvest
- Picked October to December, landed 18 February
- In the store
- Three sacks of 60 kg, one and a half left
On the table
bergamot · white peach · jasmine
The densest green we have and the fussiest. It wants heat early and then to be left alone: we charge two degrees under everything else, take the longest drying phase on the sheet, and drop it the moment the crack settles. It is the only lot we will not sell as espresso — it makes a thin, sharp shot and a remarkable filter, and we would rather say so.
The curve
Rung 1 of 4 · dropped at 202 °C
- Charge
- 191 °C
- drum, at the moment the green goes in
- Turning point
- 1:34 at 90 °C
- where the bean stops cooling and starts heating
- First crack
- 8:12
- the seed splits along its centre crease
- Drop
- 9:44
- hatch open at 202 °C, four minutes to cool
- Development
- 1:32 · 15.8 %
- crack to drop, and its share of the roast
- Weight loss
- 14.1 %
- green to roasted, water and chaff
Every batch of this lot is roasted to that shape and written down afterwards, whether it landed or not. The last eight sheets are in the roast log.
How we brewed it
Dialled on the bench, three days off the roast
Filter
62 g/L, 95 °C, 3:00 total, ground medium
Rinsed paper, bloom with twice the coffee weight for forty seconds, then two even pours. If it tastes thin, grind finer before you touch the temperature — that is the change with the shortest odds.
Espresso
Not recommended — see the note above
We will still sell it to you if espresso is all you have — but we would rather tell you now than have you pull four bad shots working it out. Cerro Azul is the lot we would put on the machine instead.
Both recipes assume filtered water at roughly 80 ppm hardness and a brewer at room temperature. Cafés on the wholesale list get these dialled in on their own machine, with their own water, before the first delivery.