Chelbesa Ethiopia

About this coffee

We’re super happy to welcome the first of the Ethiopian coffees of the season to our offering list, and it’s a stunner! This fine Yirgacheffe coffee comes from a washing station located near the town (kebele) of Chelbesa, in Gedeb woreda, Gedeo Zone, SNNPR. The station is at 2100 masl and it’s located in a region that has pretty much perfect conditions for growing, drying and processing coffee (truly – better soil & plant health, cultivar selection, cherry maturation and a more ideal overall climate we have scarcely ever seen in all of our travels). We have purchased from this spot several times over the last 5 years.. The station received and processed the cherries delivered by over 460 farmers (possessing mostly Dega and Wolisho varietals) who live around the area and deliver the coffee by mule and on their backs. Average lot size of farmers: 1-2 hectaresSoil type: Rich and fertile red soil Cherries are collected manually and hand sorted later. The cherries are pulped by a traditional Agaarde disc-depulper. Skin and fruit pulp are removed before the machine grades the parchment in water as 1st or 2nd quality, determined by density.Wet fermentation is undertaken, for 72 hours, after which the coffee is washing and grading in channels by density. The coffee is then soaked under clean water for several hours. Coffee is then piled up in layers which are 2cm in height and dried over a 10 day period then followed by hand sorting for 2-4 hours We feel a special kinship with supporting Ethiopia with our purchases, it being the birthplace of coffee genetically, and coffee being such a large export dollar earner. We additionally love above all the fact that buying Ethiopian coffee means we’re supporting a country that likes coffee too, doesn’t just produce it as a cash crop for sale to a consuming market, like many other countries do, following imperial exploitation. Ethiopia is a complicated place to work and source coffee, but it’s a place we love, full of people and coffee that we love. We will continue to work hard to make sure our sourcing of coffee in Ethiopia is as transparent and supportive of the producers as it can be.The number of hands is many and we cannot hope to exert the same influence over quality assurance and logistics as we can in the other countries we work. Nor can a foreign company set up an export business in Ethiopia (as we have done in Colombia). Therefore we must partner wisely to ensure we get the coffee we select and that the impact of our purchase is as positive as possible. While in the past we have purchased Cooperative coffees directly from the big (and small) export Unions, as well as from a bunch of small estates/private exporters, this season we have elected to partner with Ethiopian national Ephrem Beyene.