Ethiopian Coffee

For us there's just one country that really matters : Ethiopia!

Fans of Caffenation know we have a special heart for lots of coffee's from this country, the birth place of the finest Arabica's in the world.
About 35% of our yearly roasts are Ethiopian. In the first place Yirgacheffe, but also Sidamo, Harrar, Limu and a couple of other well known regions produce the best a man can get.

This week Ethiopia's newest crop saw daylight at our roastery.
We roasted a first batch of our Conventional Yirga and Sidamo.

First cup results yesterday showed great finesse.
The Sidamo had nice sweet & sour balance, and a tropical touch. Not our best Sidamo ever, but still very enjoyable.
The Yirgacheffe was something different. We brewed a couple of cups. First one had a strong chocolate smell and tasted like papaya and Napoleon lemon candy. Cooling down the flower notes appeared. Fantastic.
The second cup was surprisingly different and tasted more like those overwhelming natural Ethiopians we tasted earlier on.
Idido Misty Valley before and the Chelba Union coffee last year two name a few.
Since a couple of years we're dreaming of bringing tastes like that into Caffenation bags and I have the feeling we almost arrived.

Another Ethiopian fan is Daniel Humphries.
Last years he was helping Intelli training Barista's - that's how we met - and also with Willem Boot teaching coffee professionals about the do and don't in coffee roasting at the Boot Academy in San Fran.

And now we have the guide :

The one and only Daniel Humphries has helped Boot Coffee compile an essential, enormous Ethiopian Coffee Guide. Available to download for free.

This is a complete guide to understanding Ethiopian coffee, from production, to processing, to buying and selling. It includes phone numbers and emails of all the major cooperative unions and exporters, logistical information about buying Ethiopian coffee (and coffee in general). It even has an extended section showing the morphology of different coffee beans from different regions of Ethiopia (with astonishing high-resolution pictures).