Brandywine does a collaboration for Halloween with Fellow Drops, which is an interesting service from Fellow that promotes one or two high end coffees a week. I’m a sucker for a good special occasion edition, key word being good. Brandywine is the roaster I trust to deliver good, so this is my Halloween week coffee.
This coffee is pretty tame, relatively speaking to my recent fare and Brandywine in general, a pure Ethiopian natural process coffee from the Chelbesa station in Gedeb, reasonably lightly roasted. 15g coffee, 40 second bloom, 250g water total starting around 95 degrees. Brew time was 2.55. Fellow recommends a more coffee heavy recipe, which I’ll try, and I’ll grind a bit finer next time, but my default recipe handled this very well. Just a beautiful, plump Ethiopian coffee. I didn’t get the big red fruit notes mentioned in their listing, but I do get the creamy body and as expected lovely sweetness.
Sounds delicious. I bet it would make for some lovely soup.
I need to start getting paid by Big Soup for the amount of times I talk about it on here. Side note, currently drinking some soup while writing this out.
I think this coffee would do well in any brewing method.
I’ve been considering an espresso setup recently and I keep hitting a roadblock. I’m making pourover coffee at a high level and I have easy access to two local coffee shops that make amazing espresso. To actually get better coffee I need to spend an uncomfortable amount of money.
I had a chat with a friend about what buying a proper espresso setup would take. The answer is any sort of windfall, at all. So if I win $200 from a beauty contest I think I’m legally on the hook for a Timemore Sculptor 064s and a Turin Legato.
What grinder do you use currently?
If you’re mostly drinking light roast you’ll definitely want a machine with pressure profiling, or have that as an option to mod later. I don’t know the Turin but it’s something to keep in mind. My Gaggia doesn’t have temp or pressure profiling but it’s something I can modify it to be able to do. A Gaggimate is probably my next big coffee purchase. With that being said, I absolutely love my manual espresso maker (Cafelat Robot) which allows me ultimate control. I’d highly recommend considering a manual maker too. The Robot is fantastic but hard to find at MSRP, but there’s other great ones out there too. Flair is notable. I don’t have any experience with their products but I’ve heard great things.
I have an Ode, so not able to go fine enough for espresso. A new grinder would be unavoidable.
I have considered a Gaggia, though I’m hesitant to buy a project. I already have a few projects I’m not doing. The Turin has temperature control and a pressure gauge with the ability to modify in pressure control, I think it might be enough, and a Flair is likewise a consideration. I’m loathe to buy something less capable than those knowing I’ll want to replace it, but a Bambino is nevertheless in consideration too.
I’m not sure what gets me over the hump. For now I’m enjoying amazing pourover.
Ah, fair enough. Espresso certainly isn’t cheap to get into but if you take the plunge I don’t think you’ll regret it. At the same time, if you enjoy your pour overs, absolutely nothing wrong with that. I’m mostly an espresso guy (who would’ve guessed, crazy, I know) so it definitely made sense for me to dive in but I totally get having reservations if you’re mostly into pour over.