A truly great coffee will be so sweet and smooth as to not need any cream or sugar or Stevia. (Actually, nothing should ever need Stevia, ever. For any reason. Have you tried that stuff? It’s like putting the purified essence of the sun on your tongue, if the sun was made out of sugar and post-industrial chemical waste). A truly great coffee will also have something unique about it that no other coffee has, no matter how sweet and smooth.
And this is why we go through all the trouble to taste and score coffee after coffee in the kinds of competitions I’m describing. Trust me, a lot of the coffee is terrible. There are all kinds of defects that can come up on the table. I don’t need to tell you this. You have already had terrible coffee many times. But the search is always worth it. When you find that glittering ruby on the table, you are such a happy little taster.
Lucky for you, dear and beautiful reader, it’s not necessary to go to Ethiopia to find these coffees. Just be discerning. In fact, be a snob. I highly recommend it. If you want to find a coffee like the one that made me start singing arias in Ethiopia, look for coffee that was bought and roasted in small lots or “micro-lots.” Coffee bought at specialty auction is reliably outstanding. Look for “Cup of Excellence” (top coffees from all over Latin America and now Rwanda), “Best of Panama” (top coffees from, um, Panama), “Ethiopia Limited” (where I found my little gem) and the like.
If your favorite roaster or coffee shop doesn’t offer something like this, ask them why not. And as always, let your own taste be your guide. If it makes you want to draw unicorns, it’s good coffee.
Here are some outstanding small lot coffees available online, for discerning nerds only:
- La Golondrina Microlot from Counter Culture Coffee
- Hacienda La Esmeralda NON-auction Lot from Intelligentsia (Don’t worry … they only put “NON-auction” because the auction lot was so amazing that people were bloodying each other trying to get some. The auction lot is gone now, but you can still get amazing small lot coffee from this farm!)
- Ethiopia Biloya Natural from Stumptown
PS: If you are wondering where you can get some magenta-orgasm coffee, it’s not available to the general public yet. It will be going up for auction in early June. But I might nudge you in the direction of that last coffee on the list, the Biloya. Nudge, nudge.
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