Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Tibebu Roba
Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Natural from Tibebu Roba
I am torn with this coffee and that’s why it is here. It is a natural Ethiopian, but it tiptoes with subtlety. You could drink a nice batch brew and be happy that it was “tasty!” but unless you were locked away in a room with kettles, cupping spoons, and various other coffee paraphernalia you might not really appreciate it. The team at Trabocca has written a little bit about Tibebu and it reads a little bit like the all too familiar downtrodden school report “Could do better when he tries”.
This coffee lightens up my day in almost every way! I feel a little guilty for holding it back, but it is just delicious.
Top Trumps:
Owner: Tibebu Roba
Farm Size: 20 Acres
Zone: Gedeo
Area: Yirgacheffe
Altitude: 1950-2060 Meters above sea level
Process: Natural
Varietal: Local heirloom varietals
Roast: Light Filter. Cool dropped.
Cup Profile Filter:
Based on 60-65g per litre
|Aromatics: Apple and rose| Body: As light as tea | Acidity: Initial apple, sweet lime and stone fruit.
As I start putting pen to paper, this coffee is changing faster than I can write about it. Up-front sweet apple dominates, swiftly followed by a real drop-off in acidity. Next, there is a deep, soft, floral phase with honey-like sweetness and a soft limey finish. Up until the acidity drop, this could be a washed Colombian. Apple, lime, and some form of sugars…but the apple fades into the background. Replaced by what seems like hundreds of flavour molecules that simpletons like me look very inadequate at articulating very quickly. This calls for brewing and brewing again.
Cup profile Espresso:
If you are an espresso lover, then this will give you all sorts of pleasure as an espresso extraction it can be so many things. If you are looking to put this in milk-based drinks, it is peculiar. Beyond the usual lactic sugars, it is as familiar as milky tea. reducing the fat in the milk didn’t really help either. Intriguing. If you are going all-in espresso, then I would probably go- long and even try something like 14 – 15g into 50g+ of espresso liquid in 30-40 seconds. There is a lot that you can manipulate in flavour if you so chose. Who only knows what you could do if you could change temperature and pressure.
Farm Stuff
This lot is produced by Tibebu Roba. Tibebu’s 20-acre farm is located near the community of Chelchele in the Gedeb district of the Gedeo Zone, also known as Yirgachefe, Ethiopia. Tibebu has been cultivating coffee for over 20 years. In the Ethiopian Cup awards, he made 19th place. This was where Trabocca was (I feel) a little disparaging about the fact that he “could do better!”
