loquacious brag week: crema’s sidamo korate (hint: HOLY SCHNAIKES)
August 28, 2008 – 11:51 pmwe don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!
korate to blog: “eat me.”
** crema coffee’s ethiopia sidamo korate is perhaps the third coffee ever to turn this blog into a stark raving evangelist. it makes you want to EAT. one whiff, and you reflexively — no kidding — begin to chew, whether in an effort to contain the drool within your vacuous longing bouche or in an involuntary effort to EAT THAT BURBLING BERRY SAUCE.
the korate is like a monstrous mixed berry torte smeared viciously with creme fraiche. it’s like a milky, sweet pipe tobacco drowning in a loganberry reduction and port wine. it’s all the berries you can think of, at various stages of sipping. it’s mind-blowing in a way you never realized you wanted your mind to be huffed upon. it makes you scrutinize the granules to see if, perchance, they are soft and bursting with juice.
“what’s korate?” we said. and still, we’ve seen none few* of the big quality roasters offer this coffee (though a few lesser knowns are). we were less than enthused when c-n-c’s shannon trotted it out, a new offering from his new small-time n.c. roaster. shannon, we guess, hadn’t even tasted yet.
meanwhile, the barista-poet was traveling in our direction as people across the southeast tried to distract him by offering stellar coffees in our comments section. of course, we panicked. “what does this blog have to offer?” we moaned. “he’s not coming from the PNW to drink vivace dolce on the home bar.”
from such ignominy a glory such as korate must arise. at least, that’s what abe lincoln said. with mr. barista’s choice in our home, himself towing a wealth of stunning brews, the korate arrived, from an ethiopian place we’d never heard of, through a start-up north carolina roaster via the cash register at the local coffee kiosk, which is situated in a log cabin, on the prairie ….
no, wait. lest hyperventilation ensue, we’ll consult more empirical sources of judgement: in ethiopia, the korate handily outscored the famed idido yirgacheffe and the sidamo biloya. it grabbed a beefy 94 points from a certain notorious coffee reviewer. it “blew the doors off” jon lewis’ green espresso truck back in idaho. and, it turns out, our favorite green coffee supplier now offers a wet- and dry-process version, each carrying a hefty score.
we’ve got 60 pounds in the mail, the cypriot and this blog.
on the cupping table, it stood up to counter culture’s esmeralda, aroma-wise. pulled with soft water, it was a sort of drier, fluffier, filmier fruit spritzer, with a hint of biscotti dough. mineralize the water a bit, though, and an 18-gram, 199-degree, 1.8-oz. double espresso reminds us of …. wait, didn’t we just write a post on this?
sparky. give it a 16.
p.s. the 17-point scoring scale invented for this week of unbridled bloggy braggadocio is, it should be noted, of a completely arbitrary breadth. but no less so than any other static numeric score! context is everything …
UPDATE: * this blog stands corrected. stumptown, using a different spelling, appears to offer the stuff.
UPDATE 9/3: it stands to reason! having flogged the stuff relentlessly, octane’s ben and danielle came to town, only to find … meh. at least, that’s what this blog got from the looks on their faces. for some reason, the crema coffee-roasted korate was more muted today, more “mango” in danielle’s words, more barley-esque to this blog’s palette.
at least one of them was sympathetic, having dealt with an extremely finicky dry-processed ethiopian at this year’s national barista competition. looks like we need to know how far out of the roaster the stuff is, in order to brag reliably.
strangely, the aroma wafting from shannon’s hopper was more massive, juicy blueberry than ever …
8 Responses to “loquacious brag week: crema’s sidamo korate (hint: HOLY SCHNAIKES)”
I have been screaming about this stuff for months on my blog and person to person. Nobody seemed to listen.
Kevin is a true artisan.
I sit here this morning sipping on his Guat Finca and I am about to load the Mazzer up with his espresso.
Look, if you really want your socks knocked off, try the Korate as an espresso.
By Wilson Hines on Aug 29, 2008
the espresso and regular roasts have been consumed.
do you buy directly from kevin?
one thing i’ve noticed — lots of inconsistent, lighter-roasted beans in there. i might try culling them, then comparing.
it’s a good thing someone knows this coffee.
By bz on Aug 30, 2008
I’m all about playing around with some Ethiopian naturals as espresso. It’s a wonderful glorious fulfilling world.
However…. i hate to say it, but i don’t have much of a stomach for it as regular (french press, drip, etc) coffee. It’s a bit much for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s super exciting and fun to cup, but i don’t like my coffee tasting like it was blended with blueberry in the morning.
By Ben on Sep 1, 2008
look, helfen, you either sing the wonders of korate or you can forget stopping by the bloghouse wednesday.
oh, wait. not much of a threat, there.
i hope this makes sense about the korate: it’s not the blueberry bomb of many other dry-processed ethiopians. in fact, i’d give it more of an adventurous arc overall … which only heightens the appreciation of the berry, if that is coherent.
in other words, my reaction to other ethiopian DPs is often, “wwuuuaaahaaa, blueberry!” this is more like, “whaaa? holy sweet lovely fruitedpiecrustsmokysyrup wonder. and the BERRY!”
anyway. you’ll see.
By bz on Sep 2, 2008
Korate is a hell of a coffee. I tasted it earlier in the year and yes it scores well into the 90’s. However….Beloya will handily destroy it on any tasting table. In particular Biloya Lot #10. Better prep, more intensity, cleaner and just a better coffee. Still Crema picked one of the best Naturals of the year for sure.
By Nanofish on Sep 20, 2008
nanofish: i’ve had counter culture’s biloya, and it was indeed a treat. definitely cleaner, i’ll give you that.
what wows me most about the korate is that there’s a full complement for the blueberry. husky tobaccos, pleasant yeasts, spicy undertones and more savory fruits that completely surround the central berry aromas.
also, did you see the biloya vs. korate scores?
the original page is down. here’s the cached version:
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:L4UyM-JGMLQJ:www.ethiopialimited.com/auctionlotdetails/+ethiopia+auction+lot+details&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=safari
By bz on Sep 21, 2008
Yeah I saw the scores… and not that it means much but I gave Korate a 92 but my understanding the coffee being offered as Korate by Crema and a few other roasters is a coffee that came in from a importer called Royal in new york, and is not the same coffee that was in the 2008 Limited auction. Still if I am right– once again the non Limited auction Korate is killer. I got tons of interesting fruits and spices in it. One of the things that seems to be a trend this year are all the great naturals I have tasted (with the exception of Bagersh coffees) all have been coming from Sidamo. Just amazing stuff. Also I believe no coffee from Bagersh..ie Beloya, or Idido Misty Valley has come in so far this year. I hear an importer called 90 plus is flying in some Microlots from Aricha and Beloya that are just out of this world. I guess the story with Ethiopia this year (just like last year), is even though the coffee was harvested basically 7-8 months ago a lot of it has yet to hit the states–tons of shipping delays. So I can’t wait for the surge of Natural and washed coffees to hit the selves. Oh as a side note the Korate washed is also a killer coffee.
By Nanofish on Sep 21, 2008
nano: i actually have the korate washed, and have yet to roast much of it. any tips appreciated.
not familiar with the import specifics. interesting. do you know the story behind korate in general? asked peter g at the party this week, and he didn’t know the narrative. the farmers, the pedigree, the way it came to be discovered.
90 plus is joseph brodsky, from novo, i believe. initially lived in the country, sourcing only the stars, continues the same from a slightly different position. i think. (not direct info.) maybe you knew this.
background on this:
http://www.chemicallyimbalanced.org/2007/01/24/scraping_the_ground_s/
overall, i’m fascinated by the geopolitical and market influences in ethiopia that you touched on. a rare african country with a fairly stable government (my family lives in a highly unstable neighbor country) and yet an entrenched, distinctly african (and definitely corrupt) system of handling its coffee that would seem to have resisted american attempts to build a lot of direct relationships, efficient sourcing structures, etc.
this amuses me, because i’m distinctly familiar with such staunchly held, nonsensical (to a capitalist) views on how farming/selling/planning/exporting is done in chad (my folks’ home).
anyway, peter g illuminated this for me this week and i briefly referenced it in the sept. 19 party post. it’s a fascinating, and somewhat distinctly ethiopian, dynamic that seems to affect what we get, and when and how.
By bz on Sep 21, 2008