Ethiopia Yirgachefe: Featured Origin Select Coffee

Each month I get the pleasure of choosing a new single origin coffee to purchase and roast for our Origin Select project. While we always carry a standard selection of single origins representing some of our favorite growing regions, this gives us the opportunity to highlight some exceptional beans on a seasonal basis that we might otherwise have missed out on!

Our Origin Select coffee this month comes from the Southwestern region of Ethiopia, from the town of Gedeb, just south of Yirga Chefe. This full-bodied coffee has a delicate floral and mildly spicy aroma. Our roasters chose a medium roast to bring out the best in this special prep bean from the birthplace of coffee. 

Halo Beriti Washing Station was established in 2014 and serves 750 smallholder producers, who deliver their coffee in cherry form. This particular lot is part of a "special preparation" in which hand-sorting was done repeatedly throughout the receiving and drying process, ensuring that only perfect coffees made it into the bags.

Coffees in Ethiopia are typically traceable to the washing station level, where smallholder farmers—many of whom own less than 1/2 hectare of land, and as little as 1/8 hectare on average—deliver cherries by weight to receive payment at a market rate. The coffee is sorted and processed into lots without retaining information about whose coffee harvest is in which bag or which lot.