Tamrat Adebe (front)
  • Tamrat Adebe (front)
  • Tamrat Adebe (Product)

Ethiopia

Tamrat Adebe, lot 15 - Ethiopia

250g

QUALITY SCORE: 88.75

Cup Notes
Blackberry / Honeysuckle / Orange / Peach / Melon

Suggested for espresso and filter


when we roast

We freshly roast to order all coffees on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (excluding national holidays), and ship the same day! Cut-off time is 11:59pm (UTC+1) of the day before the roast day. *We only ship whole beans*

Details

Quality Score
90.50
Producer
Tamrat Adebe
Country
Ethiopia
Terroir
Yirgacheffe
Altitude
1900-2100 mt
Arabica cultivar
Ethiopian heirlooms
Picked in
December 2017
Arrived in
September 2018
Roast profile by
Rubens Gardelli
Roasted on
Customised solid-drum roaster

THE STORY BEHIND

We are honoured to feature this great natural coffee from Yirgacheffe terroir.
We selected this lot during the last Operation Cherry Red Auction that took place for the very first time in June 2018!

This lot is produced by a single farmer named Tamrat Adebe who brought the coffee cherries to the nearest Tracon process station.

Coffee in Ethiopia typically follows one of two paths: estate coffee or collective lots. The easier to understand (but much rarer to encounter) is the path of estate coffee that is grown and sold under the name of the estate. The supply chain for Ethiopian estate coffees is similar in large part to the supply chain in Central America in that farms are owned either by wealthier Ethiopian nationals or by Ethiopian nationals in partnership with international investors. Just like any farm in Central or South America, these farms employ pickers and processors at market rates.

Tracon has established modern coffee cleaning and storage plant in 30,000 sq meters of land. The plant is equipped with modern PINHALENSE coffee processing machines and Buhler Z+ color sorter. The machine has the capacity of processing 6 tons per hour. All the processing jobs are mechanical and electronic including final hand picking on conveyor belts. The six stores of the plant have a capacity of accommodating about 15,000 metric tons of coffee at a time. The warehouses are clean, with enough lighting, and ventilation system, which are very ideal for keeping the quality of the coffee.

Tamrat Adebe (Story)

THE VARIETY

Ethiopian Heirloom, why the generic name?
It's estimated that there are somewhere in-between six and ten thousand coffee varietals in Ethiopia. And due to this colossal figure, there hasn’t been the genetic testing to allow buyers to distinguish the varietal. With the cross pollination that naturally happens in the wild, the name ‘Ethiopian Heirloom’ exists as a catch all phrase to describe this happenstance. However, that really makes Ethiopian quite a mystery – and an interesting mystery with that as each village or town could potentially have a different varietal which could carry very unique properties.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, meaning it was only naturally found here.

Heirlooms (Variety)

THE FERMENTATION PROCESS

Dry process seems simple: pick the fruit, lay it out in the sun until it turns from red to brown to near-back, and then hull off off the thick, dried outer layer in one step to reveal the green bean. It is a method suited to arid regions, where the sun and heat can dry the seed inside the intact fruit skin.

It's often referred to as "natural coffee" because of its simplicity, and because the fruit remains intact and undisturbed, a bit like drying grapes into raisins. Since it requires minimal investment, the dry process method is a default to create cheap commodity-grade coffee in areas that have the right climate capable of drying the fruit and seed.

But it’s a fail in humid or wet regions. If the drying isn't progressing fast enough, the fruit degrades, rots or molds.

Dry-processed coffees can also be wildly inconsistent. If you want a cleanly-fruited, sweet, intense cup, dry process (DP) takes more hand labor than the wet process. Even the most careful pickers will take green unripe or semi-ripe coffee off the branch as they pick red, ripe cherry. If these are not removed in the first days of drying, the green turns to brown that is hard to distinguish from the ripe fruit.

Natural (fermentation)