A Gradually Shifting Seasonal Espresso Series

Launched this week by our friends and partners at Ceremony Coffee, meet “Asymmetries“, a seasonal espresso series that’s quite unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It starts with two Ethiopian coffees: Wazzala, a washed coffee from ECX coffee grown in the Yirgacheffe region, and Worka, a natural process coffee from a famed cooperative of the same name in the Gedeo region of Ethiopia. A two-bean Ethiopian blend is not necessarily newsworthy, but the way Ceremony has chosen to offer these coffees to the public is.

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Ceremony’s Josh Harding spoke to Sprudge about the project:

“We found two really great Ethiopian coffees that were working really well together, as we started playing with the blend rations we were noticing there was something we loved about each one. So we are going to release all of them in succession, every three weeks. So essentially we’re inviting everyone into the lab with us, into the process of blending espressos. At the end of the series, for the holidays we’ll release a boxed set of all them.

This gradually shifting espresso series lifts the veil between the customer and coffee roaster. Typically, the public only experiences one blend, the final blend. This series brings the customer into our cupping lab, where one may taste the changing balance as the two-month experiment progresses. Each version is beautiful, and we are excited to present two coffees in four distinct, delicious espressos for our friends, our customers, to experience.

The first blend out in the Assymetries series is called “80 /20“, comprised of 80% Worka and 20% Wazzala. A 60/40 blend will be made available next, on November 1st, followed by a 40 / 60 blend on November 15th and a 20 / 80 blend on December 1st. While it’s common for this kind of ratio profiling to happen behind the scenes, it’s highly rare for the espresso blending process to be packaged and made available to the public. Transparency is a meaningful buzz word in the speciality coffee world, and this project seems to us like end-user transparency between a roaster, its wholesale clients, and ultimately, the coffee drinking public.

Asymmetries 80 / 20 will be served all weekend long at Ceremony’s two cafes in Annapolis, and is now available at select Ceremony wholesale clients. Sprudge got a sneak peak at all four ratio blends of Asymmetries, seen here soaking up the fall seasonality in Portland, Oregon.

You can learn much more about this project at CeremonyCoffee.com/Asymmetries, which will be updated when new versions of Asymmetries are released. The 80 / 20 blend comes with flavor notes of “clementine and blueberry aromatics. cream soda and candied ginger in cup with a sweet, tart finish” – sounds pretty #deloshes to us.