Ethiopia Flower Power 💐

Welcome to the exceptional and exciting world of Pit Stop Coffee Co. where we are dedicated to bringing you the finest coffee experience possible. Our latest offering, the Ethiopia Flower Power coffee, is the epitome of our passion for high-quality, competition-grade coffee. This is our second coffee from Sidama, Ethiopia and our third African coffee, and we couldn't be more thrilled to share it with you.

At Pit Stop Coffee Co., we take our coffee seriously. Our focus is on delivering only outstanding coffees that are sure to turn heads, and we do this by selecting high-scoring coffees that are rated above 86 points on the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) rating (though our coffee scores are often well above 86). We pride ourselves on our ability to find incredible coffees that not only happily surprise the taste buds but are also priced fairly. We refuse to compromise on quality, and our importers understand our high standards, sending us samples of only the best coffees available for purchase directly from American warehouses. This has a quick turn around time and is near risk-free compared to how most coffee roasters purchase their coffee without even sampling the product before it arrives at their doorstep.

Once we receive our samples, we roast them all in one day and conduct rigorous cupping tests over several weeks to determine what will eventually be our next coffee. We believe in purchasing only one incredible coffee rather than multiple ones, or 225% more pounds of a lower scoring “specialty-grade” mediocre coffee we could purchase for the same price. Our Ethiopia Flower Power coffee is a perfect example of our commitment to quality. It is a coffee that we are proud to talk about and share our experiences with you. We want you to experience the art and craft of coffee, from learning about its origins to sampling the coffee to roasting and brewing. We take a lot of time and care into developing these experiences for you. It’s worth curating this unique and special experience only for a small selection of coffees - the ones we choose to carry that we believe truly deserve the cut.

We understand that many roasters focus on cheaper blends, neglecting the phenomenal 86+ point green coffee, and compromising on quality for the sake of price. This is not our philosophy. We believe that a few cents more per cup is a small price to pay for the finest coffees in the world. Our Ethiopia Flower Power coffee is a shining example of this philosophy. It is a coffee that is not only exceptional but also affordable, and it is a testament to what we believe in.

In conclusion, at Pit Stop Coffee Co., we are committed to delivering only the most outstanding coffee experiences that appeal to us, our personal values in the coffee industry, as well as our palates. Our Ethiopia Flower Power coffee is an excellent example of this commitment. It is a coffee that is sure to impress and capture your attention. We invite you to dive in and enjoy this very fine, Nordic-light roasted coffee.

Thank you for choosing Pit Stop Coffee Co. as your coffee purveyor of choice.

Now, lets dive in!

How To Drink This Coffee

This is a coffee full of floral notes and is best to be enjoyed in a cup that has a base wider than the lip (like many wine glasses) to trap in volatile aroma compounds. Coffee has over 400% MORE aromatic and flavor compounds than wine, so we should absolutely consider the vessel being used for a specific coffee. Make sure you vessel isn’t tainted (with soap or other residue). Smell the empty glass before you pour coffee into it. I like to fill my wine glass up all the way with filtered water, dump it out, then pour a little clean hot brew water from my kettle into it to warm it up and clean off any taint that can significantly effect the flavor of the coffee.

If you’d like to taste enhanced florality, use a vessel that has a standard wine glass shape to trap in aroma volatile compounds. If you’d like to taste more honey and dense textures, use a wide-rimmed vessel that directs the coffee across your palate in a wide stream. Also, for this style of drinking it’s often best to not use a wine-glass shape so your senses pick up on less florality and more honey and sweetness/texture of the coffee.

We’d always suggest experimenting with multiple drinking vessels to significantly enhance your coffee drinking experience!

This Coffees Flavor Profile

This coffee really surprised us with strong floral notes that reminded us of jasmine. As we looked deeper into the flavors, it became apparent that we were tasting many different compounds that reminded us of smelling different flowers. A close comparison to this would be wildflower honey. Depending on which region or season the honey is produced in, some honeys can taste absolutely stunning with incredible florality. Tasting like many various flowers that were pollinating in the local area at the time of a bees production.

Not only did this coffee have those wild floral notes, it also tasted a lot like honey! Every coffee needs to essentially have 3 main components: Acidity, Sweetness, and Bitterness. This creates a balance of flavors that works to make any tasting experience enjoyable. This coffees sweetness reminded us significantly of honey, specifically honey produced a couple miles south of us around the Franklin, Tennessee area. Honey can have all different types of flavors, but this specifically tastes so fresh and floral.

The Body attribute of a coffee can often be associated with its sweetness flavor as well. Since sugar content in coffee is extremely low, we believe sweetness is associated with the concentration of fines and oils making contact with your taste buds. You could have a coffee that just tastes like bright flowers (using a specific burr set and brew method) though, with some granular qualities of microscopic ground coffee particles (called fines), oils, and other insoluble materials, that ultra-floral taste is now associated with florals and honey, or a juicy fruit, etc.

It’s quite fascinating how our flavor memory changes based on the texture our tongues pick up. That’s why grinders, percolation filters, espresso baskets, and other things effecting the amount of fines and oils in the end cup are so important to having unique tasting experiences with coffee.

A grinder with more fines will often always taste sweeter (up to a certain point though, or else it’ll just fall off and taste muted/muddy), though, you’ll almost always sacrifice acidic complexity for sweetness in a given grinder with its burr geometry. This can also be associated with roast development and how brittle it makes the structure of the coffee beans. When a darker (or more developed) roast is ground, it produces a higher concentration of fines and oils available for the solvent (water) to make contact with it and carry it downstream in a pour over/espresso or mix with it in an immersion brew. These fines and oils are insoluble compounds, meaning they do not get dissolved in water, which can make it easy to filter out in a pour over, espresso, or other intentional brewing methods.

Bitterness in coffee is an area that needs some work and experimentation. If you taste only milk chocolate in this coffee, you are brewing it in a way that either isn’t extracting very evenly, or your water might have too high of a pH content. Many entry-level consumer grinders have burrs that use a geometry focused on producing a high number of fines. This makes it easy to get fairly sweet coffee, or coffee that tastes “strong”, but doesnt do much justice to the hard work that was put into this coffee from growing to drying to sourcing to roasting a nordic (very) light profile. You should always be getting loads of acidity with our coffees, flavors that really express the region it is from.

That being said, expect to either get some black tea notes or milk chocolate. If those notes are dominating the cup, grind coarser or work on your technique more (change brewers, change water pH, or if you’re really confident you’re being held back by your grinder, you may want to upgrade that as a last resort for making better coffee).

How To Brew This Coffee

This is entirely dependent on your Brewing Ecosystem and what gear, techniques, and water you have at your disposal. Each variable will often always effect everything else, which makes this difficult for us to give recommendations for how to brew this coffee.

However, we’d recommend getting a coffee mug or small soup bowl. Fill your vessel of choice until it’s about 75% full and weigh that amount of water it holds. Next, divide that amount of water by 15.38. This will be the amount of ground coffee you should use.

Heat water to 207 degrees. Grind coffee and put it into this mug/bowl and pour 207 degree water over grounds. Wait 5:00.

At 5:00, “break crust” by swiping up on the floating froth layer 3x with a spoon. Let crust fall down.

At 6:00, use two spoons and scoop froth layer off of vessel and discard.

Wait until about 12-15 minuets (or until cooled to your preference). The cup is ready to drink from! Be sure to not drink the ground at the bottom!

This is one of the best ways to drink coffee as it wont suffer from many brewing defects like a pour over or espresso will. All you have to do is find the right grind size. We’d recommend a peak particle distribution grind size of about 600-900 microns.

Cupping Grind size chart | Comandante: 20/21 | Bentwood: 630 | Forte: Majority between ~600-900 microns | Mahlkonig Guatemala: 16 (burrs touch at 1 or 0)