Washed Yirgacheffe coffees are a favorite among coffee buyers. Although the profile is often bright, floral, and clean, the washed Yirgacheffe also brings flavor diversity and depth to every sip. Read what our cuppers found after tasting and recording the profiles of washed Yirgacheffe coffees.
Washed Yirgacheffe’s have a certain diversity when it comes to flavor groups. However diverse they appear, the charm of their profiles comes from the structure that binds a handful of generic notes in a certain order.
The outstanding cleanliness of the cup brings depth, context, and clarity to these citrics, florals, and herbals to a point where we very often distinguish more specific notes and associations such as peach coupled with jasmine, jasmine coupled with bergamot, and always somewhere in the background a zest of lemon-like notes. They are accessible, and yet remarkably complex.
We discovered that there are two main types of washed Yirgacheffes, one that is more vibrant with high-pitched yet bright citric -and sometimes malic- acidity; and a milder profile-type, that unfolds through chocolate-like notes among nuanced citrics and delicate herbals and with typically a touch less acidity of the same nature.
Their mouthfeel reveals a thin-to medium body, characterized by smooth edges and varying textures from silk to tea-like and radically juicy whenever there is more weight on the tongue. Note that sometimes, the mouthfeel can be a bit dry.