Brewing an Ethiopia Sidamo Two Ways

In the past year, Royal Coffee New York has expanded with the addition of The Lab by Royal NY. Not only are we excited to offer a vast array of courses for all levels of coffee lovers (from the home roaster looking to start up a new business to the business professional looking to expand his/her knowledge of the growing specialty coffee industry); but we are also excited to experiment with the amazing coffees that we import and ship out to roasters.  We roasted a natural Ethiopia Sidamo from the Howolso cooperative in the Sidama Zone two different ways, chose our preferred roast for the coffee and used this profile for a single origin espresso shot and a V60 pour over.

Ethiopia Sidamo Single Origin Espresso

Before experimenting with a single origin espresso, we allowed this naturally processed coffee to degas and rest for 4 days. After dialing in a few shots, we decided to go with a finer grind from the initial shots that we pulled. Our goal was to extend the time and pull a longer shot. We started off with 14g of coffee in and ended up with 40g out after extending the shot to 30 seconds. Our ratio was just under 1:3. The resulting shot had a syrupy, heavy body with a nice crema. We were able to extract the perfect balance of sweetness/fruit from the Howolso using these specs on Sanremo’s Treviso. The shot had notes of black tea, currant, blueberry, cherry liquor, with a sweet graham cracker finish. The fragrance was full of intense fruit notes and the overall drinking experience was smooth and sweet.

Ethiopia Sidamo V60 Pour Over

Aside from pulling shots, we also wanted to do a pour over with the Ethiopia Natural Howolso to really determine the acidity and sweetness notes in this coffee. We used a 6.75 grind setting on our Mahlkonig EK43 grinder along with a 1:16 ratio. The resulting brew smelled like a fruit bomb before we even tried it! We picked up on some lemon, strawberry and blueberry notes.

Our Preferred Roast Profile

The main goal kept in mind when roasting the Howolso was to provide the beans with enough development in order to make the final roast ideal for espresso and filtered pour overs. Miles mentioned that having tasted the Howolso before, she knew that it had the potential to be sweet, juicy and fruit-forward. She kept the end temperature in mind in order to provide the perfect roast for our experiment. Below is the roast curve and the specs recorded on the Loring S15 Falcon at The Lab.  If you have any questions or would like to discuss this a bit further, feel free to contact us.

More about this coffee

Ethiopia Natural Sidamo Grade 3 – Howolso Coop – Fair Trade (E)

Reference# 30943: Tart lemon with strawberry and blueberry notes – roasted medium