ETHIOPIA peach ∙ chamomile ∙ black tea
Heleanna Georgalis is one of the best names among Ethiopian
coffee buyers. Her processing and meticulous selection methods
make her coffees to arrive around the end of the year, but then they offer the cleanest taste profiles.
I
f we had only one chance to turn a friend into a lover of coffees, we would definitely ask him to taste an Ethiopian coffee, most probably a coffee like Kochere from Yirgacheffe. He would most likely be surprised to experience the truly unique taste of a coffee coming from a micro-region that is by all means considered to be the birthplace of coffee.
Ethiopia has always been the country of extraordinary coffees. Ethiopian coffees can be instantly recognized on blind cuppings because of their distinctive flavour made up of the several hundreds of indigenous arabica coffees grown wild in various micro-climates. According to a recent survey, the number of local coffee varieties is estimated between 6000 and 10 000. This number is both unprecedented and staggering. 95% of Ethiopia’s 300 000 tonnes of coffee export is supplied by more than a million small farmers. The rest is grown by an increasing number of private and state-owned farms. There are two paths to purchase Ethiopian coffees: on the coffee stock exchange (Ethiopian Commodities
Exchange, ECX), or through the coffee trading companies comprising several co-operations. Although our supplier Heleanna Georgalis has an ECX license, he has decided to choose a third path: he directly purchased the coffee produced by nearby neighbouring farms and processed the beans herself. He is so rigorous and has such high standards in coffee processing that his coffee could only start its long journey to Europe a few months later than the coffee of other farmers.
Our coffees taste the best when extracted with water of the proper hardness* range. In order to highlight the best flavour of our roasts we recommend having 5 to 10 days of resting period after roasting, but consume within two weeks of opening. Enjoy!
This coffee is wet-processed and comes from Gedeo, Yirgacheffe, more specifically from the micro-region of Kochere. The growing areas are at the altitude of 1900-2100 metres and stretch along several mountains. The location of the farms and the local Kurume variant grown in the area give this coffee the clean but sharp acidity, and enrich it with hints of typical bergamot tea. Talking of acidity, we should mention that by removing the sweet mucilage attached to the coffee beans only after 2-3 days of fermentation intensifies the acidity of the coffee. * Total hardness: 50 –175 ppm CaCO3 (2.9–9.8 °d), ppm CaCO3 (2.2–4.2 °d), pH: 6.5-8.0.
alkalinity/buffer: 40 –75 (The SCAE Water Chart)
photo by the Collaborative Coffee Source
KOCHERE