Ethiopia
Halo Beriti
Yirgacheffe
2100-2300 masl
Heirloom varieties
Washed

Dried apricot, fresh peach, and panela sugar.

Halo=Perfection: The Halo Beriti Washing Station has been around since 2014, facilitating 750 smallholder farmers to process their cherry. At Halo Beriti, smallholder farmers bring their cherries to the station, where a 'special preparation' intensive selection process ensures only perfect beans make it into bags. Rigorous station protocol ensures sorting opportunities happen multiple times throughout the receiving and drying stages.

Many farms little quantities: Typically washing stations in Ethiopia handle hundreds, sometimes even over a thousand farmers during harvest season. This sounds like an unfathomable quantity, but it is really because the farms they support are incredibly tiny. So tiny they are referred to as 'coffee gardens'. These coffee gardens are essentially organic household coffee gardens intercropped with vegetables for their family and false banana trees for shade.

Ongoing support: Since cherries from many producers are combined into 'day lots' (blended lots based on quality), it’s tough to trace coffee back to individual farmers. Still, our green importer for this lot Cafe Imports makes a consistent effort to establish close relationships and reliability by purchasing from the same washing stations every year. This strengthens partnerships with local exporters, mills, and producers allowing them security, peace of mind, and to focus on producing the best coffee they can.

Washed Process: The washed process at Halo Beriti Washing Station is pretty standard for Ethiopia. Ripe cherries are picked and depulped on the same day. Then, they ferment for 8–12 hours in open-air tanks. Once fermentation is complete, the beans are washed in water channels to remove any remaining mucilage (sticky fruit pectin layer). Finally, the beans are laid out on raised beds to dry for 5–15 days, depending on the weather and humidity, until optimum moisture levels are achieved.

Birthplace of coffee: Ethiopia holds a legendary status in the coffee world- it’s not just the birthplace of Arabica coffee but also a place where coffee has been an integral part of daily life for centuries. Unlike most other coffee-producing countries, Ethiopia didn’t start growing coffee as a colonial cash crop. Instead, coffee has always been a local tradition, grown and loved by communities. For a lot of us coffee-obsessed folk, Ethiopian Coffee will always hold a special place. This lot shows why, with simple processing (nothing too flash required) and simple farming practices, it's a coffee you can drink all day- true to its roots, clean, sweet, and vibrant.