Coffee birthplace

Africa: Ethiopia

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Map of the Ethiopia Coffee seedlings distributed free to farmers at a government nursery in the Hararghe region. From my 2008 trip. Milling dry-process coffee by pounding the heck out of it! Eastern Hararghe region, 2008. Current Crop Comments: 2008 has been a fantastic year for Dry-Process coffees, and there are a few stand-out Wet-Process lots too (but more difficult to find. Koratie of both types has been great, early Harars were good, and Dale Yirga Alem was excellent too. Idido Misty Valley is due late in the season. 2007 had lot of very poor DP samples coming, while the wet-process coffees were excellent. With a great Harar I am looking for fruited notes ranging between blueberry and apricot, brightness, and not too much rustic character that would distract from the fruits. Usually, early new crop Harar and Yirgacheffe are not the best. Nonetheless I cup them all, and I cup a lot of Ethiopian lots to find the ones we offer. This origin is very important to me!

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee: it is in the forests of the Kaffa region that coffee arabica grew wild. Coffee is "Bun" or "Buna" in Ethiopia, so Coffee Bean is quite possibly a poor anglicized interpretation of "Kaffa Bun". Coffea Arabica was also found in the Harar region quite early, either brought from the Kaffa forests or found closer by. It is entirely possible that slaves taken from the forests chewed coffee berry and spread it into the Harar region, through which the Muslim slave trade route passed. Ethiopian coffees are available from some regions as dry-processed, from some regions as washed, and from Sidamo as both! The difference between the cup profiles of the natural dry-processed vs. the washed is profound. Washed Sidamo, Yirgacheffe and Limmu have lighter body and less earthy / wild tastes in the cup as their dry-processed kinfolk. Ethiopian coffees can vary greatly from lot to lot. It takes A LOT of cupping to find the specific lot of coffee that is superior. MAO Horse imports a lot of coffee, but each year one specific "chop" (lot number) out-cups the others. Since lots differ in character, and I do so much to find the best lot, we are now listing the Lot Number in the description of the coffee. When I find that coffee, I buy the majority of the year's coffee immediately, leaving a small opening in case any other good lots come along later in the season. But my experience has been that early shipments of the DP Ethiopians are often the best of the season, in contradiction to many other origins where the earliest are often underdeveloped, lower-grown coffees and the mid-crop pickings are better. Organic supplies have been good, and a few lots have been outstanding. Here's an interesting article outlining the producers hopes for the budding Organic Ethiopian coops. We have many pictures and notes about Ethiopia coffee in our travelogs, namely a cupping trip to Addis and an interesting trek to Dire Dawa and Harar in the east. Coffee Farms: 331,130 peasant farms 19,000 state farm coffee areas Harvest Times: Washed: August-December Dry: October to March Exports all year Coffee Workers: about 12 million Grading, Processing : Grade 1= 0-3 defects Grade 2= 4-12 Most coffee qualifies in these 2 grades, but is exported as grade 4 or 5, presumably for tax reasons (?) Shade-Grown: 55% light shade 33% medium 17% heavy Certified Organic: None certified: all coffee grown organic by tradition Major Coffee Growing Regions: Harar, Sidamo, Yirgacheffe (in Sidamo), Limmu, Djimmah, Lekempti, Bebeka Rank in Production:: 2nd in Africa 7th in World Botanical Cultivars: Native arabica (arabica coffee is indigenous to Harar) Introduced: Coffee grew wild on the Harar plateau before the existence of man, and in Ethiopia that is a long, long, long time ago. A brief word about the grading of Ethiopian Coffees: The top grade Ethiopian washed coffees (Yirgacheffe and Sidamo, usually) might bear a Grade 2 or 3, dry-processed from the Eastern parts will be 4 or 5 by nature of the preparation method. Oftentimes, a Grade 4 will be marked grade 5 to save on taxes and duties. The whole system is a bit tricky, because you can now have a Grade 1 or 2 natural from Yirga Cheffe, but not from Harar, where the top grade will be Gr. 4 . But we judge coffee by cup quality via blind cupping: not the marks of the bag. Expect uneven roast color from even the best of the dry-processed coffees. Even roast color is not necessarily a mark of high cup quality. NOTE: Some Ethiopian dry-processed coffees are hand prepped and dried in the sun - so watch out for rocks! There can be small stones and dirt clods in the coffee that you need to cull out before roasting and definitely before grinding as these can jam a grinder. A ground up dirt clod can foul an otherwise lovely pot of coffee. (In wet processed coffees the stones fall out in the water channel but in dry processed coffees, small stones can escape detection and make it all the way through to the final bag.) Expect uneven roast colors from dry-processed Ethiopian coffees. In this image of Harar, there is one bean to cull out - pretty obvious.