Wednesday, May 17, 2006


the everyday yrg

leapt outta bed today in full anticipation of making sara's everyday yrg -- as roasted by colin -- as a half-pot chemex in the so-called "oren proportion." that is, 2 oz. fresh ground coffee to 26-28 oz water, depending on how much water the coffee grounds absorb (which i find is generally, but not always, an amount about equal to its dry weight).

i usually find that it actually takes 28 oz. water to get to the half-way "dot" on the chemex. if you don't wet the chemex filter before brewing, you may find it takes another oz.

as noted previously, this now 6-day-old yrg is a dark roast; i call it vienna. i don't normally drink yrg this dark, so sara's coffee is rather an adventure for me.

lemme take this opportunity to note that i personally find -- to massively oversimplify -- that yrg generally comes in 2 main types: the washed, winey, lemon-scented caramel yrg with a light-medium body (don schoenholt's gillies yrg, which ken davids once called the best yrg ever, is of this type); and the winey, dry-processed yrgs that are like harrars, such as the kello, hama, and finchwa.

i don't know any of the details of sara's yrg, so lemme just describe it as it came to me this morning in its dark roastiness: the roast had turned the floral fragrance of the dry grounds to a green spice; the aromas were dark molasses and sweet pipe tobacco; the taste slightly phenolic; and the body was light-medium.

if you are an espressohound who normally doesn't like yrg, this is definitely a coffee for you! will try it as a single-origin shot tomorrow. . .

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posted by fortune | 8:11 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | TwitThis | 0 comments