Hits: 4
Beans: Kava Roastery, Banko Gotiti, Heirloom, Washed, Worka, Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia.
Shop: Kava Roastery, Webshop, Split, Croatia.
Kava Roastery: Background information.
Kava roastery owners Ivana & Marko are a couple that, while shooting weddings around the globe, somehow fell in love with specialty coffee. Back home in 2018 they decided to rent a tiny neglected space in Hvar, tear it apart, breathe new life into it and open their first shop in Hvar. They named it kava 37.
Today, the kava family is a sum of three parts – kava37 in Hvar, together with kava2 and kavaRO in Split.
Their whole business is focused on a simple motto:
roasting and brewing beautiful coffees from beautiful people for beautiful people. We want you to feel welcomed at our cafes. The service you get is what completes the long coffee chain and pays tribute to all the people that worked hard to get to that cup. Our family is made up of some extraordinary people who respect this. We want our shops full of people from our community working, reading, and having conversations there. Think of it as your extended living room. After all – we are family.
Banko Gotiti is a village in the Gedeb district of Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone, where Yirgacheffe is located. The Banko Gotiti cooperative was founded in 2012, separately from the Worka cooperative, which is a larger organization. Banko Gotiti has about 300 members, who grow a mix of heirloom Ethiopian varieties of coffee.
Coffees in Ethiopia are typically traceable to the washing station level, where smallholder farmers—many of whom own less than 1/2 hectare of land, and as little as 1/8 hectare on average—deliver cherry by weight to receive payment at a market rate. All the cherries arriving at Banko Gotiti washing station are selectively handpicked. The coffee is hand sorted to eliminate under- or overripe as well as damaged fruits and then processed into lots without retaining information about whose coffee harvest is in which bag or which lot.
Opening the Package.
The Kava coffee comes in a simple black package with an elegant designed label. If I am correct, the colour on each label depicts a certain worldly item. Green is depicts a plant, yellow a house and blue is the sea. It is a little like the cubism art style. On the label you will find information on the region, producer, altitude, variety, process and tasting notes. Obviously the package has a ziplock and degassing valve to keep your coffee fresh. What I do miss, is the roasting date of the coffee. Since I bought this coffee in Prague, it might be that the shop selling these beans forgot to put a roasting date on it.
The beans look beautifully evenly roasted and biting down on one reveals a subtle lemony and floral note to it. The bean is medium crispy and the aftertaste is that of black tea leaf. Opening the package reveals a peachy, floral and cookie aroma on the nose. Let’s brew!
Banko Gotiti: The Tasting.
I reviewed this coffee on the V60, Aeropress and Clever Dripper. All methods were great, I do recommend brewing this coffee in the higher temperature region of 96/95 degrees. Let the coffee cool down before finishing it because otherwise you will miss out on a lovely tasting note.
This coffee is all about elegance and subtle notes. When brewing the coffee you will find notes of lemon, lemon zest and peach on the nose. Later on, you will also detect a soft hint of bergamot and jasmin as well.
Taking a sip, I recommend you to slurp some oxygen in your mouth and swirl the coffee round. Notice how elegant this coffee feels. There is a silky mouthfeel, a citric lemon acidity, a bergamot note and a mixture of peach and lemon appearing. The lemon note will become stronger when the coffee cools down so if you do not get it at first, you will later on. When the coffee is still hot, you will also notice a heavier fruity note that appears in the background. This a subtle apricot note that will become a little more dominant as the coffee cools down. As you might have already figured out, this coffee has a nice development in your cup. When the coffee reaches those cooler temperatures, a grapefruit bitter will develop in the aftertaste. Together with a hint of lemon and apricot, this makes for a very nice aftertaste. Remember how I talked to you about that surprise when the coffee cools down? Take another sip, slurp oxygen inside and try to find the THC (Canabis) note in the coffee. This note doesn’t appear often and some people do not like it. Personally, I can appreciate it when the note appears in a combination of notes like the ones in this coffee.
The Verdict.
Kava Roastery has surprised me with the Banko Gotiti coffee. This washed Ethiopia is all about elegance and subtlety with great tasting notes. I love how both the peach and the apricot have their own spot in the palette, how the grapefruit, lemon and THC combine when the coffee cools down. This is a Yirgacheffe in all it’s splendour and a coffee that you can drink all day long, every day of the week.
Great job Kava Roastery!