Ethiopia Dry Process Yirga Cheffe Halo Beriti

While still very much a fruited dry process, this lot from Halo Beriti showed impressive core sweetness and roast tones that balance the scales a bit in the brew. City/City+ roasts showed a strong dark honey scent in the ground coffee that was quite intense, with light-toned molasses hints, and orange. Adding hot water to the grounds awakened a more of a cooked fruit compound within layers of dark sugar sweetness, like fruit reductions, cooked pie filling with cinnamon, and spiced cider. The cup is has such a nice roast flavor at the core of the complex dry process profile, best described as dark caramelized sugars blended with semi-sweet chocolate accents. It has well-defined lemon acidity, bright, and even a bit grabby, like the bittering of a lemon rind. Acidity is often compromised in dry process, but definitely not the case here! In fact, we found the flavors had a lot of aspects typically associated with washed coffee, flavors that are mouth-cleansing, clean, and bright. The aroma has some very nice fruit notes as the coffee cools, like mango, and ripe orange. The finish pulls at the chocolatey flavors underneath, leaving with something like creamy chocolate mousse with a lemon rind zest on top.