Toba Sulawesi: The best coffee I've tasted by an order of magnitude. Absolutely sublime. Yes, a hint of grapefruit, but overall a tremendously rounded flavour without any hint of unpleasant edge. Espresso has body and silkiness, excellent crema and grinds consistently. I won't be hurrying to try anything else.
Good.
I've just ordered two bags of it, one green and the other roasted for reference.
Last night I roasted two batches of beans, neither are for the machine. Honduran 'La Fany' which I've probably had before, but is sitting de-gassing in the fridge.
The other batch is Ethiopean Yirgachef, which I have had hanging around for ages. I bought a 2kg bag on recommendation, roasted 250g of it and found it lacking any taste. I dug it out yesterday, two years later, and realised I had made a terrible mistake. In my head I'd confused it with Harrar, which is an earthy coffee needing a mid-dark roast. Yirgachef is more akin to Kenyan Peaberry, with grapefruit acidity and floral tones. I'd killed all of that and just got a butterscoth flavour... not unpleasant, but unremarkable.
I roasted it very carefully yesterday, taking it just out of the first crack, but a million miles from second. The beans looked beautiful, with a lovely cream stripe. This evening, I cupped.
On the nose it was delicate. Caramels abounded, a vague hint of chocolate, but no! In the cup what awaited me was light, bright, lemon acidity, with a typical light floral jasmine coffee blossom. But the huge surprise in this one is the peach apricot and summer fruits zooming through the mid-palate of the cup.