Coffee is a fruit not a bean. I used to say that a lot to really make people understand that you can't be afraid of the fruit. The fruit can be very delicious. A coffee that is very jammy and sweet is not your milk and sugar coffee but it is more like a sweet red wine.
I personally love the great clean perfume Yirgs. The great antithesis to the funky fermenty Harrars.
A thought, the absence of roast flavors is the essence of coffee flavors. I have this theory that the absence of roast bitters allows you to taste more of the sweetness in these dense uber coffees. Bitter confuses the palate and hides the sweetness. While I admit you can manipulate some really interesting roast flavors at times(especially in espresso), the fruit is what is unique.
It comes back to what George talks about with the coffee horizon. A concept where coffees are a commodity where all the micro lots are blended together and roasted/processed as such into one generic coffee profile. When you roast dark and slow enough, you can make most any coffee into a dull cocoa with a generic coffee flavor. He's right about that. The thing is it also applies to espresso and over blending. When we put filler in the blends that may cover or hide much of the interesting tastes in the coffee.
We should seperate the coffees at harvest into smaller and smaller lots to help isolate the most complex and unique lots. Goerge is pioneering this and the CoE helps a lot.
With all that said, I'm going to take some time and learn more about tea. I am tired of bickering with people who just focus on renaming the standards instead of finding a better cup. Minutia over flavor. When it comes back to flavor, I'll be there.
Does anyone get the feeling that the Scandanavians in general and especially the Danes are drinking better espresso than us on a daily basis? While we are wowing over 2oz doubles of lightly roasted Yirg SoE, that may be old hat for them! Something to ask the last three WBC champs.
-Jaime
