Know your coffee beans!
ETHIOPIAN YIRGACHEFFE SHALAITU – from Atkinsons in Lancaster – £8 per 250
In the last few years, something transformational started to happen in the way our coffees from Ethiopia were prepared, sourced & classified. Last year we came across one coffee from the Dumerso washing station, in Yirgacheffe, which totally blew us away. For years we have traditionally only been offered washed coffees from this region. Beautifully soft, sweetly fragrant coffees that were an established favourite with generations of Atkinsons customers. Now all of a sudden we had a new, but authentically old, kid on the block – a dynamic, spiky, juicy punk of a bean that was going back to basics to overthrow the established order.
We call it Shelaitu, named after the glittering stream that runs through the washing station.
Some Naturals are almost synthetically sour like Juicy Fruit chewing gum but this was a delicious iron fist of intense juice in a velvet glove of sheer soft-fruit sweetness. This was what I had been searching for. This was the apotheosis of a Yirgacheffe Natural.
