We were excited to receive a 93 score from Coffee Review this past month for our Organic Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Aylele. Coffee Review is a coffee buying guide run by the esteemed Kenneth Davids, and is used by many coffee aficionados to find the best coffees available, from the universe of available roasters. Each month there is a specific theme, and roasters around the country submit their best coffees in hopes of receiving one of the top ratings and being published. This was the first time we had submitted anything to Coffee Review, and the theme was 'Coffees from a Single Variety, Single Lot'. Only 13 of the highest rated coffees are published in the monthly article, and our Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Aylele made the cut with an outstanding 93 score! Click here to read the review.
Our focus at Evans Brothers is finding these 'microlot' coffees that can be traced directly to the farm and lot level. This differs from a coffee that is simply listed with the region it comes from, as is most often the case in Africa. You'll ususally just see a coffee as Ethiopia Yirgacheffe. This is because most of the farmers are very small scale and all send to the same regional location for processing. There is often no incentive to be better than your neighbor. This is beginning to change with the work of good importers such as Cafe Imports, who located this coffee for us. They have provided financial incentive to individual farmers and isolated each individual farm. Mr. Aylele and his family rose to the top this year. Last year we selected coffee from a nearby farm owned by the Birhanu family, a coffee that ended up winning a Good Food Award.
This is one reason why our coffee offerings rotate seasonally. We are always searching for the best of the best. For anyone wanting to get the best coffees we have available, I recommend our Roaster's Reserve Coffee Subscription. We select our best coffees every month and send these to you automatically, assuring that you'll always drink our most exciting Kenya's or Ethiopian's or other limited release, special coffees.