Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

Ethiopia is considered as the cradle of coffee and famous for the fact that it was in the forest in the Kaffa region where Coffea Arabica grew wild. Nowadays, the country shows a typical “smallholder” structure. This means that a high number of farmers with a usually small production  field carry together their cherries and bring them to central washing stations rather than processing their coffee with own machinery. At the washing stations the beans are carefully sorted before being processed. Only the fully ripe and red cherries find their way to the pulper in order to ensure a homogeneous and consistent quality. The cherry skin and the pulp are now removed from the bean. After that the beans are put into fermentation tanks for 24 – 36 hours depending on weather conditions where any remaining pulp is subsequently stripped by the fermentation. The coffee is then finally washed and graded in washing channels. Now the high humidity content of the beans needs to get reduced down to approx.12%. This happens under the African sun on so called ‘African beds’ resp. ‘drying tables’ during 10-15 days, where the coffee is carefully raked several times a day.

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee is known for its sweet flavor and aroma with a light to medium body.  It is spicy and fragrant, and is frequently reviewed and rated as some of the highest quality Arabica coffee in the world. Yirgacheffe coffee is a wet processing (washed) coffee grown at elevations from 1,700 to 2,200 meters above sea level, and is the considered the best high grown coffee in southern Ethiopia, an exotic coffee region known for fine coffees.