Zwarte Roes Sidamo Ethiopia 2020

Let's get started on a new series. I ordered the Zwarte Roes tasting bundle, containing 4 different coffee's. Zwarte Roes is a specialty coffee roaster from the northwestern part of the Netherlands where I grew up. "West Friesland" isn't that hip a place, so specialty coffee beeing brewed there is quite exceptional.

First up is the Sidamo from Ethiopia. The first thing that really caught my attention with these beans are they are roasted fresh. Like really fresh. Like the day before I got them fresh. This is great, and allows you to experiment with the amount of days you let the beans settle before roasting them. As I've read around several coffeegroups, leaving the beans to rest for about 10 days after roasting is ideal.

And indeed, this was the case with the Sidamo beans as well. To be honest, we couldn't wait 10 days to taste them and they got better as each day passed.

I don't know if it had to do with the freshness, but these beans produced my first ever tiger stripes 🐅 with a flair espresso, which was exciting and glorious to behold:

Roast-wise, the Sidamo are quite lightly roasted. As with all lighter roasts, these are hard to extract well. When making a cup of espresso with these, we got a very textured shot. Tangy, but not too sour with hints of caramel, fruit, oranges citrus and even some pecan nuts and berries.

Loads to discover here, quite a complex brew and not for the faint of hearted black espresso drinkers. We also tried a cup of Aeropress with these beans which produced a much more balanced drink that got a thumbs up from our tasting team at Snoffeecob HQ. Not my favorite of the bunch, so stay tuned to read the other Zwarte Roes blogs.