Coffee Highlight: Ethiopian Worka Sakaro

Every now and again we come across a truly special lot of coffee. The kind of coffee that is so good it makes you not want to brush your teeth after drinking it. Obviously, for the sake of the people around you, we don't advise that. It might sound intuitive, but coffees are scored for quality much like wine. We tend to order on the higher end of the score card depending on how we'll be brewing it (e.g. cold brew, espresso, etc.). Sometimes we'll get sent samples of very top tier coffees, the cream of the crop if you will. This Ethiopian Worka Sakaro is one such coffee.

Tasting Notes

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's talk about tasting notes. Because Ethiopia is essentially the "motherland" of all coffee, Ethiopian coffees are renowned for having a large variety of flavors and bouquets. They are specifically known for being extremely fruity. This is why when we tend to teach people how to start tasting coffee properly, we use Ethiopian coffees. It's basically like drinking a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. This coffee has tasting notes of Blueberry Poptart, Vanilla and Lemongrass.

Processing

A big factor in a coffee's flavor comes from the processing (how the coffee cherry gets taken away from the seed within and dried). There are many methods and none of them are the "best". It all depends on the coffee and region. One very new method of coffee processing is known as Anaerobic Processing. It's super weird, and we love it. In fact our most popular specialty coffees have all been anaerobic coffees this year. It's kind of sweeping the world of coffee right now, and we're all here for it.

So what is anaerobic processing?

Traditionally there's 2 main ways of processing coffees: Washed or Natural. Now there are a lot of tweaks, hybrids and the like; however, most coffees fall into those categories. Anaerobic does not fit in these categories. Before moving into the drying process, the coffee cherry ferments in a vat (much like a beer, wine or liquor) for a period of time ranging from 2-21 days depending on climate, elevation and coffee. This Ethiopian Work Sakaro is fermented for 3-7 days.

Anaerobic processing creates the result that you might expect. It creates extremely rich, deep flavors with hints to alcoholic tasting notes. Many of our Costa Rican coffees last year were anaerobically processed and tasted as if you had poured a bottle of merlot on top of a blackberry cobbler. If that doesn't sound delicious, then we don't know what will.

Gimme Gimme Gimme

Because of the limited stock and high quality nature of this coffee, we've decided to offer it almost exclusively to our subscribers. It's our small way of saying thank you for getting us up and running in our subscriptions. But… If you've made it this far into the blog, we will let you in on a secret… you can walk up right now and ask your local barista to make you a cup of this Ethiopian Worka. It's not on the menu, and you won’t find it on our shelves. We're keeping it on a secret menu in store, but the only customer able to acquire a bag of it is our subscribers. If you want to get yourself a bag of this Ethiopian Worka Sakaro or future exclusive coffees, please consider subscribing.

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Michael