Broadway RC Yirgacheffe, Good Food Awards 2012 Nominee

This isn't a review, so much as blatant publicity. I work for a shop that brews Broadway's beans. They're a Kansas City based roasterie that does things on a small scale, with spectacular results. They don't have the niche cred of Blue Bottle or Stumptown, or even local darlings PT's. But for my money (and I do order this stuff), Broadway is as good as anyone.

My personal favorite - as if you couldn't guess - is their Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. It's super clean, refreshing, invigorating. It's like a glass of lemonade on the front porch you probably never had. But as LeVar Burton reminded us on Reading Rainbow, don't take my word for it.

The Good Food Awards has placed Broadway's Yirgacheffe amongst their finalists. The criteria, in their words: The winners of the Good Food Award for coffee will be distinguished by exemplary flavor - sweet, clean, well developed body, balanced acidity and phenomenal aromatics. To qualify for entry, roasters and coffee farmers must emphasize fairness and transparency from seed to cup, and be using third party certified organic beans. Once again, coffee is leading the way towards sustainability.

Now there are problems with requiring third party organic beans. Mostly, there are a lot of companies doing great things with farmers who, for a number of reasons, can't get the certification. Sometimes it costs too much; sometimes there are logistical issues. But the emphasis is headed in the right direction.

This is good food - or coffee, in this case. But it's also good coffee. The taste is impeccable. But beyond that, you're supporting good people (I've met some of them, and worked with the company for a while now) who do things the right way. This isn't hipster idealizing; it's not quoting Michael Pollan and then sneaking off for a Big Mac. This is indulgence and ethics climbing in to bed together.

And I'm pretty thrilled that I get to serve it.

Ethiopian Coffee, Double Strong

My fave soccer club, fresh off of a league championship, put the (spiked) boots to Defence Force yesterday. In the battle of awesomely named clubs, Ethiopian Coffee dominated, winning 4-2. Defence Force? Ha! More like... Let The Other Team Score Force.

Better Than Football and Beer

There is something right about a Sunday morning spent drinking Ethiopian coffee, watching East Africa's finest distance runners torch the New York City pavement. And although Kenyan dominance is at its apex, Ethiopia represented itself well, claiming the first two spots in the women's race. The unrelated Mutais of Kenya topped the men's field, Geoffrey (he of the unofficial fastest marathon ever) dropping the proverbial hammer on everyone else.

You watch, noting the arm carriage, foot strike, turnover, and facial expressions. You try and glean from those things anything you can, hoping to emulate their technique - and thus their success. You feel a bit like an 8-year-old flipping your bat around like Barry Bonds in the back yard, thinking his timing mechanism will enable you to crush 40 homers a year. (We'll not mention the steroid induced forays beyond that number, in his later years.)

But ultimately, you know better. It's not any of those things that makes the runner. Nor is it the shoes, despite all the talk these days about them. (I'm as guilty as anyone.) The outward appearance is merely the chassis, under which the real work is being done. The heart, lungs, muscles and skeleton all pushed, strained and tortured - their protests ignored. It's that mental fortitude that wins and loses races, the ability to override and ignore your governor. That's as true for you and I as for Mutai.

And that's how I watched the New York City Marathon, coffee in hand. To be anything but inspired is to lack a pulse. And so I'm going to have another cup of Yirgi, head to the trail, and see how high I can push mine.

Peter Asher's Yirgacheffe

There are several things worth noting, right off the bat. First of all, this coffee was provided to me, so that I could offer my opinion on it. If that suggests bias, then so be it. Second, I have a disproportionate fondness for coffee from this particular region. At its best, it's clean, fruity, and refreshing, like a not-to-sweet lemonade on a summer day. And finally, this specific coffee embodies all of those traits perfectly.

But let me back up, for just a moment. The coffee in question is Peter Asher's Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. The company is a small one, based out of Champaign, Illinois. It offers wholesale coffee, much of which is sourced directly from a farmer with whom the proprietors have a relationship.

The Yirgacheffe is despribed thusly: What did the Olympic gold-medalist say to the Rastaman? It isn’t difficult to understand, really ... That a country with some of the highest mountain peaks in Africa as well as some of the lowest elevations on dry land would provide some of the purest, simply unmitigated premium coffee beans around. Waterfalls, active volcanoes, prehistoric and medieval history, a biblical monarchy; This land has everything! Some even say that its home to the emergence of the first humans. Well, did you know that it’s also the birthplace of the coffee bean? Just look up the history of coffee to see for yourself.

Ethiopia’s had quite a while to get it right. This hot cup of coffee captures the simple pleasure of what it means to be human. Our roast of these ancient beans extracts the clean, pure, slightly fruity quality that only they could offer. Simply put its some of the best coffee in the world. So, what did the Ethiopian Olympic gold-medalist say to the Rastaman? Welcome home.

Well. That's certainly not your average bean description. Not once is the word "bold" invoked, nor are there flavors or mouthfeels discussed. The bag itself sheds a little more light on what to expect, though again, there is a certain profile expected from a Yirgacheffe. You expect bright acidity, light body, and a tangy taste of lemon. As it's a washed bean, roasted light, these flavors are concentrated and direct. Of course, this leaves a little less room for error. Yirgacheffe, mishandled, can be acerbic and pungent, rather than clean and smooth.

With these preconceptions in mind, I opened the bag. The first thing to note is the bag itself: it contains a clever little plastic zipper, which can be used to re-seal the bag. You can then squeeze out the air through a one way opening, thus leaving your beans fresher for longer. If you grind them all at once, or order them ground, this would be especially useful.

In any case, I did neither of those things, grinding 4 tablespoons of beans for a pour over setup (somewhere between regular drip and espresso setting). I set 12 ounces of water to (just off the) boil, then went about pouring, in my regular pattern.

The smell, rising from the cup, had the vague lemon aroma of an Earl Grey. The taste delivered on that promised flavor, sweet but soft. Though there was certainly a clarity to the acidity, it never seemed biting, not the slightest bit astringent. The word clean, used in the description, comes to mind. It was smooth, almost too easy to drink too quickly. And so that's precisely what I did, not savoring the cup as much as I had intended to.

I don't have any numeric rating scale, or any other metric for grading coffee. I find the whole endeavor too subjective for that. I can say, however, that his coffee is everything a good Yirgacheffe ought to be, and lives up to the creative description and my expectations for the region. If a step away from dark, nutty or earthy is what you're looking for, or if you'd just like a taste of caffeinated summer, this is a very good place to start.

Ethiopian Coffee; No, Not That Kind

My writing career - if a blog, on its own, constitutes as much - began several years ago, as a sports writer for the University Daily Kansan. I wrote about basketball mostly, because basketball is mostly what people want to read about at KU. Unless it was football season, of course, in which case that dominated my column space.

I don't write about sports much anymore, which is not to say that I've lost interest in the matter - though my interest has certainly waned. It has more to do with the fact that other interests have taken over. In the realm of athletics, I'm more interested in my own pursuits; namely, finding a local 5K I can win. Failing that, I suppose collecting age group awards isn't the worst thing.

Coffee is mostly to blame, of course, since the vast majority of my writing has to do with that infamous brew. But finally, that false dichotomy can be struck down; it needn't be that I write about coffee at the exclusion of sports. 

http://www.ethiosports.com/2011/03/05/ethiopian-coffee-defeats-dedebit-fc-2-1/

Addis Ababa – Ethiopian Coffee maintained its second place ranking in the Ethiopian Premier League with a 2-1 victory over Dedebit FC here today, reported the Addis Ababa-based website, EthiopiaFootball.com.
The much anticipated match between the league’s runner-up and third-placed team did not disappoint football fans, who packed the stadium to its full capacity.
It was Dedebit, which opened the score thanks to its midfield general and former Ethiopian Coffee player Dawit Fekadu, who scored 32 minutes into the first half. And that’s how the two teams went to the dressing room for half-time.
Ethiopian Coffee leveled the score (56”) courtesy of an own goal by Adamu Mohammed of Dedebit. Twelve minutes later, Coffee went ahead after the referee awarded a controversial penalty kick. Sisay Demissie was the scorer.

I've found my new favorite team.

A Line Too Long

You have to feel a little sorry for the lady. She had endured a 30 minute line, with no roller coaster at the end. She had a child with her, and a coffee too. For most cashiers, the former would draw comment. Something like "cute kid" or "what's her name?" perhaps. But this is me, and my attention went straight to the cup.

"What are you drinking?" I asked.

"Oh," she said, "coffee."

"Well yes. I can smell it. And it does smell lovely. But if I recognize that cup, you got that at The Merc. I was just curious which coffee you got. I had the Ethiopian Harrar earlier. I love African coffee in general, Ethiopian perhaps more than most. But with most beans from that region, you get high acidity, which I like, but this was interesting in that it lacked that. It was roasty and smooth, with just a little grainy or nutiness to it. More like something from Latin America. It was really interesting."

She did not quite make eye contact with me. You have to give her credit for that, for hiding the "WTF" face she surely wanted to make. "Dark roast," she said. "I just grabbed the one on the left. I put cream and sugar in it too."