Coffee category: Bright
Process: Anaerobic natural
What to expect: A rare anerobic natural coming out of Ethiopia which has also been perfectly processed. Like a good natural Ethiopian this coffee has lots of fruity notes which the anerobic fermentation further highlights. Notes of apple and grape with a clean citrus acidity.
Producer: Smallholder farmers organized around the Biloya processing station
Region: Wenago district, Gedeo Zone
Altitude: 1,600-2,100m above sea level
Varietals: Various Ethiopian Heirloom
Anaerobic coffees from Ethiopia are still a tiny fraction of the country’s massive output. Fortunately, many of them are produced by the most ambitious and successful processors and exporters, which means the quality is extremely high. This lot, from an independent group near the heart of Gedeo zone, is a sweet, creamy, winey, and intensely fruited thanks to an extended anaerobic cherry fermentation and careful,
consistent drying.
Kochere District
Biloya is in the Kochere district, near the center of the coveted Gedeo Zone—the narrow section of highland plateau dense with savvy farmers and fiercely competitive processors whose coffee is known the world over as “Yirgacheffe”, after the zone’s most famous district. Kochere is one of Gedeo’s largest districts. The Gedeo Zone is named for the Gedeo people who are indigenous to this area. As a coffee terroir, Gedeo, or “Yirgacheffe”, has for decades been considered a benchmark for beauty and complexity in arabica coffee. It’s known for being beguilingly ornate and jasmine-like when fully washed, and seductively punchy and sweet when sundried, and hardly requires an introduction. Many roasters would count Gedeo, or “Yirgacheffe”, as one of the terroirs that lured them into a lifetime of coffee admiration.
Biloya Station and Processing
The processing site in Biloya responsible for this coffee is owned and operated by Tracon Coffee, an independent exporter who manages 6 stations total in Gedeo zone and a large dry mill in Addis Ababa. Farmers in the Biloya area, typical to all of Gedeo average just 2 hectares or less per household. In addition to coffee cultivate avocado, soy beans, sugar cane, and enset, a fruitless relative of the banana tree whose inner pulp is scraped, packed into cakes, fermented undergound, and then toasted and consumed as a staple starch. This special anaerobic natural process began with the usual daily cherry delivery and a careful hand sorting for uniform ripeness. Cherry was then fermented whole in oxygen-deprived tanks for 24 hours to allow prolonged time for sugars to maximize and the fruit fibers to break down without risking oxydizing or rotting. After the anaerobic fermentation was complete, cherry was carefully moved to drying tables to dry, regularly rotated for about 3 weeks until the internal moisture reaches 11.5%. Fully dried pods were then stored for multiple weeks to stabilize moisture content and water activity, then hulled locally and transported to Addis Ababa for final milling and export.
Ethiopian Coffee
Among coffee-producing countries, Ethiopia holds near-legendary status not only because it’s the “birthplace” of Arabica coffee, but also because it is simply unlike every other place in the coffee world. Unlike the vast majority of coffee-growing countries, the plant was not introduced as a cash crop through colonization. Instead, growing, processing, and drinking coffee is part of the everyday way of life, and has been for centuries since the trees were discovered growing wild in forests and eventually cultivated for household use and commercial sale.
The majority of Ethiopia’s farmers are smallholders and sustenance farmers, with less than 1 hectare of land apiece. In many cases, it is almost more accurate to describe these farms as “coffee gardens” as the trees do sometimes grow in more of a garden or forest environment than what we imagine fields of farmland to look like. There are some large privately owned estates, as well as co-operative societies comprising a mix of small and more mid-size farms, but the average producer here grows relatively very little for commercial sale.
