2018-01-06 — Ethiopia Sidama Nansebo

Roast Date: 6 Jan 2018
Duration: 11m58s
First Crack @ 8m38s
Rating: ★★★★☆
1.2lb → 1.07lb; 11% Weight Loss

Sweet Maria’s

Nansebo has an herbal sweetness like rue, backed with a flavor of white honey in City/City+ roasting that makes for a deliciously sweet Ethiopian cup. Clove spice hints mark the dry fragrance, along with perfumed orange smells in our light roasts. The wet aroma has a canned peach scent that culminates in a likeness of peach pie with graham cracker crust. As a brewed coffee, Nansebo pushes a deep level of honey sweetness at a wide range of roasts, City and City+ roasts striking a nice level of balance between fruited sweetness and a orange-like brightness. The cooling cup offers glimpses of stone fruit and citrus notes too, tart apricot, nectarine, and a slightly underripe orange flavor register. There’s a contrasting, pleasant bittering sensation too that reminds me of peach skins too, sweet-to-tart flavors rounding out the long finish. Full City roast bear some darker fruited notes, plum and prune juice, but in low volume comparatively to core bittersweetness of honey-backed cocoa powder. Acidity is more muted at Full City too, and I found ours to make incredible single origin espresso. Espresso shots have focuesed fruited notes, blueberry and dark chocolate, tenedam spice, fresh coriander, and a nice citrus zing.

Roast Notes

I preheated the bucket, but didn’t try anything special to cool down the beans quickly. While writing up these notes I noticed that I could hear the beans a little bit; not cracking or crackling, but presumably still doing something, so I poured the beans into a cookie sheet to allow them to cool faster. I would like to start doing that normally.

Cupping

Acidity: Light acidity at the front in the beginning, quickly overwhelmed.

Sweetness: Chocolaty sweetness that reminds me viscerally of chocolate ice cream.

Mouthfeel: Almost chalky, contributing to the chocolate flavor.

Flavor: Chocolate and the fruity undertones of dark chocolate.

Finish: Chocolate!

Balance: This is good, but we’ll see how I feel before the week is over.