Ken Davids and his co-tasters have kind words to say about Victrola’s newest Single Origin Espresso. The featured article on CoffeeReview.com reveals that our Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere SOE is the best of its class this month. We are so proud to reveal a score of 92 for this amazingly delicate, citrusy espresso!
“The highest rated of the high-grown washed, light-to-medium-roasted nominations was a sweetly bright, classically lemony and floral Ethiopia Yirgacheffe from Victrola Coffee Roasters (92) that at a medium roast succeeded in coming across as zesty rather than sharp, with the elegant aromatic vivacity of the Yirgacheffe washed type mostly intact.”
The Kochere SO Espresso is available on the bar at Victrola on 15th Ave and soon at the cafe on E Pike St.
This high-elevation washed coffee was a favorite from our menu last summer and we have been having a great time sharing it with you again this year. Coffee Review favored the drip profile Kochere at a score of 92 then and we’re thrilled to see it rank well again in 2013!
Tomorrow, and every Wednesday after that forever and ever, we will be holding our Weekly Public Cupping at the Roastery and Cafe at 310 E Pike St at 11a.m.
At this cupping we will be tasting some pretty amazing coffees sent to us by our wonderful importers in order for us to sample roast and evaluate. We can not do it without you! Your taste buds are required for proper evaluation. Please join us and embark on a sensory journey through coffee growing regions across the globe.
If we see you tomorrow, you just might get to sample coffees from some surprising locations as well as coffees that are extremely unique… no kopi luwak though, we promise.
The 2013 crop from Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere has arrived in the roastery on E Pike St! We are ecstatic to offer this delicately floral and black tea-like coffee in the cafes in Seattle as a French Press option, at the pour-over bar as well as Single Origin Espresso. You may remember it from our summer 2012 menu when it scored a Coffee Review score of 92. The Yirg Kochere is back by popular demand & is just as wonderful as you remember it!
Facts:
Region: Kochere District, Yirgacheffe
Varietal: Wild/Heirloom
Altitude: 5900 to 6550 ft.
Processing: Washed
Roaster’s Notes:
Considered one of the most prized coffee regions in the world, Yirgacheffe produces some of the most distinctive coffees year after year. The coffees of the region are diverse while maintaining a flavor profile that is unmistakable on the cupping table: light-bodied, floral, sweet, and citrusy. This year we again decided to purchase coffee from the Kochere District in Ethiopia, as it has consistently been one of our favorite microregions. We’re lucky to have this new crop of coffee so early in the season, thanks to our importing partner whose experience and connections in Ethiopia help ensure their coffees are among the first to ship each season.
This year’s crop from Kochere is aromatically intense with jasmine, rose, orange, and sweet marzipan. The cup starts out lively and bright. Lemon-lime citrus and subtle green apple notes create vibrant, juicy acidity. As the cup cools it mellows into sweeter fruits reminiscent of melon and hints of berry. The mouthfeel remains light, gentle, and tea-like.
Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and as such, the coffee trees thrive in their natural environment. Most coffee there is grown by small-hold farmers, whose ripe coffee cherries are processed and dried at a local mill or cooperative. Typically the trees are wild varieties that grow in the ecosystem they evolved in, contributing to the great cup diversity found from one microregion to another. This natural relationship between the coffee trees and their environment allows the plants to grow at extraordinary elevations, often beyond 6000ft, as with this coffee from Kochere. For these reasons Ethiopia continues to produce some of the most complex and desirable coffees on the planet.
Retail 12oz bags of the Ethiopia Yirg Kochere are available at the cafes and online for $16.50. You can also find it at the cafe pour-over bar & in the hopper as a Single Origin Espresso.
Washing Coffee in Ethiopia
Do you brew Victrola Coffee at home? How about on the road? Do you take your Victrola travel mug to work with you every day? Has it been to France? Have you saved all your Victrola Gift Cards that you get every year on your Birthday? Do you like Free Stuff?
Why don’tcha PROVE IT to me!?
Take a photo OF YOU with something you got at Victrola with our logo on it & post it to our Facebook wall, or tweet it out to @VictrolaCoffee or use #VictrolaCam if you’re feeling hashtaggy. We’ll pick some good creative ones to win from our stash of free stuff and prizes. You wouldn’t belIEVE the good stuff we have to give away – it’s mind boggling!
Here’s an example – it’s Perry, our head roaster, sipping from our 5.5 oz Cappuccino cup & Saucer in Guatemala at Finca Vista Hermosa.
So get out there and snap some Victrola Selfies!
We’d love to see you and your Victrola swag in your natural habitat.
BEACON HILL VICTROLA HOSTS KIMBALL’S SECOND GRADE ART CLASS’ CREATIVE WORKS OF ART APRIL 11 FROM 3-6PM
Thanks to the Capitol Hill Blog, @CHSfeed, and the @seattleweekly Blog, the word is out about our little Arabica Tree and Finca Victrola. In the spirit of fun and education, we’ve been caring for this 10 foot tall coffee tree for the past few years using it as a tool for training baristas and during public coffee cuppings every Wednesday at 11am. When a customer or new hire shows interest in the origin of coffee, being able to touch an actual coffee producing tree and look up through its branches at vibrant blossoms and berries is invaluable!
Each season she produces fragile white flowers which turn into pistachio-sized green berries. Weeks later, the color slowly turns to a bright crimson. The skin of the cherry is tight and thick and shines in the natural light from the skylight above the tree as it thrives in the cupping room at the café and roastery on Pike St in Seattle. Though the tree grows at sea level, we’ve kept the temperature in the café comfortable and kept her on a watering schedule that allowed for a better yield this year.
We harvested for the second time this month and I snapped some photos. The skins came cleanly away from the beans inside. In fact, if you aren’t careful, the bean will shoot right out of the fruit as you squeeze the cherry! What’s left behind is a delicately colored nugget of mucilage-covered coffee bean. It is extremely dense and virtually inedible at this point.
The beans then go into a moisture controlled environment for a time to encourage fermentation. We are experimenting with our own version of a pulp-natural process but don’t have the proper tools to formally process the beans we pick. Next, the beans will be set out to dry & the mucilage will be stripped away. Then our roasting team will roast them in the sample roaster and we’ll cup them within a day or two.
Judging from our past ventures into processing & roasting coffee from our own tree, I think we will skip submitting our Finca Victrola roast to Coffee Review to be evaluated… Flavor wise, the results have left much to be desired. But it’s still pretty cool to be able to experiment with this stuff. We’ll harvest only a small number of beans since we only have one tree at Finca Victrola, and though it takes roughly 75-100 roasted beans to make a cup of coffee, we keep our hopes high but our expectations realistic!
Keep you posted…
How do YOU brew coffee at home? Vickie baristas love to make you your daily beverage at the cafes, but we also love to tell all we know about coffee preparation. It’s part of our vision as a Roastery & Cafe– to share and to educate.
If you’re like me, on more than one occasion you’ve found your cup in the morning doesn’t quite taste like the steaming hot aromatic & full flavored cup from the café does. You have taken all the steps you know are part of the coffee-preparation ritual – purchased fresh roasted coffee, ground the beans inhaling deeply as you do this (not technically part of the ritual, but important nonetheless!), heated water & hit the ‘brew’ button or submerged the French Press plunger after a few minutes. But after plopping down on the couch & taking that first sip, you mutter to yourself, “it’ll do”. You don’t want to settle for just OK. We don’t want you to have to either.
Victrola’s website has a lot to offer. Besides detailed descriptions of all our coffees and guilty-pleasure shopping for mugs & equipment, you can find brewing guidelines, cupping & flavor evaluating techniques, our roasting philosophies & even some SCIENCE! How can you not love science?
Take it from us, the pointers here will guide you toward coffee-brewing enlightenment. If it’s high-fives and sassy repoire you’re looking for, you’re going to have to put on some pants & come pay us a visit.
