Why Ethiopian coffee tastes like blueberry

Nothing is added. When a plain Ethiopian coffee smells and tastes of blueberry, the fruit comes from the coffee itself: old heirloom trees, a seed that dried for weeks inside its own cherry, cold high farms, and a roast light enough to leave all of that alone. Blueberry flavored coffee is a different product, coated with flavoring after roasting, and its label has to say so.

Blueberry is a real coffee flavor

The Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel, which the Specialty Coffee Association of America and World Coffee Research redrew in 2016, has blueberry on its outer ring, filed under fruity and then berry. Tasters use the word because the smell is that specific. Pour hot water on the grounds of a good Ethiopian natural and the kitchen can smell like a carton of berries.

The note turns up again and again on natural coffees from Ethiopia's south: Sidama, Guji, Yirgacheffe. Four things put it there.

The trees are Ethiopian heirloom

Arabica coffee grew wild in the forests of southwest Ethiopia long before anyone farmed it, and the country still holds more of the species' genetic variety than anywhere else. "Ethiopian heirloom" on a bag means a mix of that local stock. Some of it is old garden trees handed down on small family plots. Others are selections the Jimma Agricultural Research Center made from local trees, such as 74110 and 74112, both released in 1979. On most farms they grow side by side, and their cherries are picked and dried together.

The trees supply fruity and floral raw material. They do not explain the blueberry on their own, though. The same heirloom trees, washed instead of dried in the cherry, usually taste of lemon and jasmine rather than berries. There is more on the trees in what Ethiopian heirloom coffee means.

The seed dries inside the fruit

A washed coffee has its fruit stripped off the day it is picked. The seed is fermented, washed clean and dried on its own.

A natural goes the slow way. The whole ripe cherry, skin and pulp and all, is spread on raised beds in the sun and left to dry for up to three weeks. While it dries, yeasts and bacteria feed on the sugary pulp, and the seed sits in the middle of all that for the whole time. It comes out tasting of fruit and a little of ferment: jam, red wine, berries. Most of the blueberry comes from here. Natural vs washed coffee goes through the two methods side by side.

It only works if the drying is even. Cherries left in a wet heap go past fruity into boozy and sour, which is why the beds are raised off the ground for air and the fruit is turned. On Elena's beds in Sidama the whole cherries dry for up to three weeks, turned by hand every hour. When Aurelio tasted her coffee in 2006 he wrote one line in his notebook: "this one I do not understand, and I like it very much."

The farms are high and cold

Ethiopia grows its coffee between about 1,500 and more than 2,200 meters, according to USDA's office in Addis Ababa. Close to the equator, height is what keeps a farm cool. A review by Fábio DaMatta and colleagues in the Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology puts arabica's best mean annual temperature at 64 to 70°F (18 to 21°C). Above 73°F (23°C), they write, the fruit develops and ripens faster, "often leading to loss of quality."

A slower cherry gives the seed longer to finish filling, and a fully formed seed gives the drying and the roast more to work with. Elena's plots near Bensa sit at 2,050 meters.

The roast is light

Blueberry is a fragile flavor. The longer and darker a roast goes, the more it tastes of caramel and then of smoke, and both cover the fruit. That is why Ethiopian naturals are usually sold as light roasts. Ours is stopped early, before any roast flavor can crowd out the fruit.

Real fruit notes or flavored coffee?

A flavored coffee is roasted first and then coated with a flavoring, natural or artificial. Three checks tell them apart.

1. Read the ingredients. A plain coffee has one ingredient: coffee. Federal law excuses a single ingredient food from printing a list. Once flavoring goes in, the bag needs an ingredient list, and FDA rules have the flavoring appear there as "natural flavor" or "artificial flavor" (21 CFR 101.22).
2. Smell the whole beans. Flavored beans smell loudly of their flavor straight from the bag. A natural Ethiopian smells of fruit and a little of wine, and the berry gets stronger once the beans are ground and hot water hits them.
3. Look at how the flavor is named. A tasting note is a comparison, usually one of several, such as "blueberry, jasmine, peach". A flavored coffee is named after its flavor. What tasting notes on a coffee bag mean explains how roasters choose those words.

How to brew it so the blueberry shows

Pour over suits it best. Use a slightly coarser grind than usual and water just off the boil. Sofía's recipe is 25 grams of coffee to 400 grams of water at 201°F, about 2:45 from first pour to last drip.

Our light roast from Ethiopia is a Sidama natural grown by Elena at 2,050 meters, with hints of blueberry, jasmine, peach. Give the cup a few minutes to cool before you judge it. Fruit is easier to pick out warm than scalding.