Ethiopia
Keramo Village
250g
Terroir Best Lot
QUALITY SCORE: 89.50
Cup Notes
Bergamot / Blueberry / Mango / Tangerine / Strawberry
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
- 89.50
- Series
- Terroir Best Lot
- Producer
- Several small farmers
- Country
- Ethiopia
- Terroir
- Bombe mountains
- Altitude
- 1960-2360 masl
- Process
- Classic Natural - Raised Beds
- Arabica cultivar
- Ethiopian heirlooms
- Picked in
- January 2021
- Arrived in
- October 2021
- Shipped in
- Jute + GrainPro
- Roast profile by
- Rubens Gardelli
- Roasted on
- Customised solid-drum roaster
THE STORY BEHIND
The producers of Keramo, who live high in the beautiful Bombe mountains, deliver their coffee to Daye Bensa's Keramo washing station as outgrowers. The outgrower group consists of about 1500 growers in various parts of the mountain range.
Daye Bensa is a coffee export company, founded by the brothers Asefa and Mulugeta Dukamo, in 2006. Asefa and Mulugeta have lots of experience, and started out as coffee suppliers in the Sidama area. The younglings of the family have also joined the company as Daye Bensa started to grow, and now family members like Kenean, schooled in the USA, work in commerce and finance, and Eliyas - in quality assurance.
Keramo cherries are processed at Keramo washing station. The cherries are gathered at some of the most elevated farms in Ethiopia, with elevations up to 2360 meter above sea level. The beans are very dense, with heavy concentration of the smaller screen sizes due to slow maturation at higher altitudes.
Cup of Excellence:
In 2020, Daye Bensa won the 7th place in the Cup of Excellence with their Assefa Dukamo Natural, grown on Gatta farm and processed in Shantawene station. This year, Assefa Dukamo of Daye Bensa is participating with a washed Hamasho coffee and reached the 8th place in the ranking.
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 as each village or town could potentially have a different varietal which could carry very unique properties.
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 Keramo is made from well-selected, ripe cherries, floated upon reception to remove any low-quality ones and then dried on African beds for 14 to 18 days. Cherries are locally hulled into unsorted natural beans, and then transported to Addis Ababa for final sorting.
MORE INFO
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