Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Koke

Yirgacheffe is back on the menu and we know you're all excited! Same here!
This coffee is especially timely, boasting notes of chocolate orange and cinnamon - perfect for fall days in the PNW. This is another great selection from Mercanta Coffee Hunters. 

Medium roast. Perfect as an Aeropress or pour-over. 

Our price per pound (pre-roasted): $4.69*

Additional information about this crop from the importer, Mercanta:

Yirgacheffe is actually part of the Gedeo Zone, Southern Nations Nationality and people’s region (SNNP), in southern Ethiopia, but its exquisite, washed coffees are so well-known that is has been sub-divided into its own micro-region. This steep, green area is both fertile and high – much of the coffee grows at 2,000m and above.

At first glance, Yirgacheffe’s hills look thickly forested - but in fact, it is a heavily populated region, and the hills are dotted with many dwellings and villages’ growing what is known as ‘garden coffee.’ This is when families grow coffee on small plots of land surrounding their homes. There are approximately 26 cooperatives in the region, representing some 43,794 farmers and around 62,004 hectares of garden coffee. The production is predominantly washed, although a smaller number of natural sundried coffees also come out of Yirgacheffe.

Around 85 per cent of Ethiopians still live rurally and make a living from agriculture; each family usually lives in a modest home (often a single round mud hut) and farms their own plot of land, where they grow both cash crops and food for their own consumption. In Yirgacheffe, coffee is one of the main cash crops – covering from half a hectare to 1.5 hectares (the latter is considered big). This is usually planted alongside a
second cash crop – often a large-leafed tree used in making roofs for (and also shade provider for the coffee) known as 'false banana'. This looks like a banana tree but is not - instead, its thick stem is used to produce both a nutritious flour and a fermented paste that are staple ingredients (particularly across southern Ethiopia).

There is only one main harvest a year in Ethiopia - this usually takes place in November and December across all of the country's growing regions. Roughly 220 smallholders contribute cherries to this lot, grown on plots of land less than 1 hectare in size. During the harvest, producers will deliver the freshly picked cherries to the Beker Washing Station. Here, the coffee is sorted and evenly dispersed on raised beds to dry in the open sun. The coffee remains here for 16 days until the ideal moisture content is reached. The coffee is then hulled and prepared for export.