Brandywine does a collaboration for Halloween with Fellow Drops, which is an interesting service from Fellow that promotes one or two high end coffees a week. I’m a sucker for a good special occasion edition, key word being good. Brandywine is the roaster I trust to deliver good, so this is my Halloween week coffee.
This coffee is pretty tame, relatively speaking to my recent fare and Brandywine in general, a pure Ethiopian natural process coffee from the Chelbesa station in Gedeb, reasonably lightly roasted. 15g coffee, 40 second bloom, 250g water total starting around 95 degrees. Brew time was 2.55. Fellow recommends a more coffee heavy recipe, which I’ll try, and I’ll grind a bit finer next time, but my default recipe handled this very well. Just a beautiful, plump Ethiopian coffee. I didn’t get the big red fruit notes mentioned in their listing, but I do get the creamy body and as expected lovely sweetness.
Trying it before you buy is very reasonable. I’ve given people coffee similar to what Brandywine does best and gotten blank looks. It doesn’t look like they have an official coffee shop but inevitably near any premium roaster there is a good cafe selling their coffee.