Ethiopia
Yirgacheffe
Southern Nations, Nationalities & Peoples
Gedeb
Gedeo Zone
1900-2100 masl
Heirloom Varietals
Washed

Caramel slice, Apricot, and orange

This coffee comes from the Gedeb district in the Gedeo zone, and is produced by the 'Southern Nations, Nationalities & Peoples' (SNNP)

located in high altitudes in the area. In recent years, the region has developed a distinguished reputation for producing some of the most sought-after coffee.

Like many coffees from Ethiopia, this coffee collaborates with local smallholder farmers growing coffee in small lots typically less than 5 hectares. In a nurturing, unique microclimate under the shade of the native forest, cherry is selectively picked with quality and sorting controls essential, and stringent processing is vital.

Picking, sorting, and drying: Manually harvested and hand-sorted red ripe cherries are selectively picked at optimal maturity. This requires several passes but ensures consistency and uniformity across the lot.they are further sorted into grades using density channels, once delivered to a washing station, the coffee is pulped, fermented for 48-72 hours, washed, and the cherry is floated for defects, graded and placed on 70-cm raised beds for drying.

The chosen cherry is turned frequently and covered during the hottest parts of the day (12-3 pm). This prevents bruising and reduces the chance of cherries rotting or going mouldy while allowing natural fermentation to occur and ensuring steady and even drying.

At around 8-15 days, the cherries reach optimal moisture levels (11.5%), and the beans are ready to be separated from the cherry, known as ‘hulling’. Once hulled, the final step is dry milling, which is done by removing the outer skin from the beans. The coffee beans now become recognisable in their final raw form as green beans and are then stored for local sale and international export.

Varietal: Heirloom is an umbrella term used to identify the abundance of wild indigenous coffees that grow in Ethiopia. Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, has seen a plethora of wonderful breeding, cross-breeding, and endlessly mutating coffee varietals that number in the thousands. As is often the case, once a desirable varietal is discovered (usually with particular flavour attributes in mind), it will be separated and cultivated on a small farm where it may later be identified as a new varietal. This is one of the things that makes sampling and selecting heirloom varietals so enticing—a surprise almost always awaits.