Last week I had the occasion to purchase 250 grams of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Banko Chelchele roasted coffee beans from the Hexagone Café.
Located in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, the café is a handsome establishment that specializes in selling single-origin coffee beans as well as beverages (espresso and filtered coffee) made from those beans.
The beans are roasted in Brittany.
Back home, I finely ground 18 grams of the coffee beans and made an espresso with my stove-top 9Barista espresso machine.
The process produced about 40 grams of espresso coffee. There were no tasting notes printed on the bag, so I did not have much to guide me in my search for flavor except my own palette. I thought that the coffee did not express much sweetness, but, on the other hand, it was not overly bitter.
In other words, I could drink it without sugar.
Searching on the Internet, I found other people’s tasting descriptions of the Yirgacheffe bean and, after brewing several cups, I thought that I could detect the following: unsweetened chocolate, blackcurrant berry, and lime.
These flavors are ephemeral in that they are not always there cup after cup.
I was pleased that the brewing processes consistently produces a crema on the surface of the coffee. I believe this is related to the freshness of the roasted bean. The batch I purchased was roasted on the 10th of February.
Hexagone Café
121, rue du Château
75014 Paris
