Review: Lift Coffee Ethiopia Kochere (Riverside, California)

Here is another selection from Craft Coffee. This coffee reminded me a lot of the Three Ships Konga Ethiopia Yirgacheffe that I reviewed back in March. Both are natural-processed Ethiopian heirloom varietals, and the beans are quite lightly roasted and smaller than typically seen.

Whole beans: Bright, juicy berry aroma. It smells like a mix of tart blueberries and raspberries. Once the beans were ground, they got super sweet and it smelled like blueberry muffins. Yum!

French press: Once the slight plasticky scent that I find common to natural-processed Ethiopian coffees dissipated, I tasted a lot of cocoa powder and raspberry. A little tart and bright, but the most dominant flavor was the rich depth of cocoa. Very juicy cup.

Chemex: Very little cocoa in this – it had a thin body that smelled like raspberries. It also had a hint of floral character. I could definitely taste the hibiscus.

AeroPress: I got even more cocoa in this cup than in the french press cup. This had very little if any fruit character to it. Very smooth, but I felt it was a bit dull compared to the other methods.

V60: This cup struck a nice balance between the Chemex and french press cups with a cleaner, drier finish.

Summary: Lively, bright coffee with lots of red berry flavor. My favorite of this batch was the french press rendition, as I thought the dichotomy between the cocoa and the raspberry notes was very nice. The Chemex cup was also delicious!

Notes from the roaster: Floral scents of hibiscus reveal bittersweet flavors of raw cocoa and ripe gooseberries.

This coffee is not currently offered online.

Lift Coffee Roasters

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