Ethiopia Guji 4 Natural Derikocha – 29835 – Ecotact Bags – SPOT CCARGO

Price $3.35 per pound

Bag Weight 133.2 lbs

Position Spot

Bags 30

Warehouses Madison

Flavor Profile Key lime, pear, berry, chocolate

Please Note This coffee landed more than 8 months ago.

Grade 4 Grade 4 is considered a mid-range grade and still exhibits notable characteristics. Grade 4 coffee beans are smaller in size and have a varying level of defects, including under-ripe beans, known as quakers. While they may not exhibit the same level of complexity and flavor as the higher grades, they can still offer a satisfying taste experience with distinct Ethiopian coffee characteristics, including earth and fruit tones.

Check out our Guide to Ethiopian Coffee Grades

About this coffee

Grower

Smallholder farmers located in the Deri Kidame community

Altitude

1900 – 2300 masl

Variety

Indigenous landraces and cultivars

Soil

Vertisol

Region

Deri Kidame community, Guji Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Process

Full natural and sun-dried on raised beds

Harvest

October – January

Certification

Conventional

Coffee Background

There are few entrances to Guji--a distant and heavily forested swath of land stretching southeast through the lower corner of the massive Oromia region--and none of these routes are short, or for the queasy, in any way. Guji is heavy with primary forest thanks to the Guji tribe, a part of Ethiopia’s vast and diverse Oromo nation, who have for generations organized to reduce mining and logging outfits where they can, in a struggle to conserve the land’s sacred canopy. Compared to other coffee-heavy regions, large parts of Guji feel like prehistoric backwoods.  

This coffee is produced by various smallholder farmers throughout the Derkidame community, in the district of Hambela Wamena, which starts at the border of Gedeo zone (also known as Yirgacheffe) and runs southeast toward Shakiso. Historically even this part of Guji could be a full day’s walk from the nearest trading centers of Gedeb or Dilla to the west, which left many coffee farmers debilitated by lack of access to market, and cherry prices often less than half of neighboring Gedeo or Sidama zones. Farms tend to be very small and are traditionally diversified between coffee and subsistence crops, and grown with organic methods. 

Coffee farms in this part of Guji are extremely high in elevation, even for Ethiopia. To pass from Hambela Wamena district to Gedeo Zone, as nearly all the coffee must do to begin the trek north to Addis Ababa, one regularly reaches heights of 2600 meters or higher, and yet the scenery remains as fertile and bustling as anywhere. The highland farming communities in this part of the country can be at turns Edenic in their natural purity, and startlingly remote. 

This coffee is processed 30 kilometers east from Derikidame, in the Benti Nenka community. Sisay Bekele is the station manager and employs 130 people during harvest time to manage the intake of cherry and processing. Natural process coffee is hand-sorted and cleaned upon arrival to the processing site; once cleaned, cherry is sun-dried on raised mesh beds for 2-3 weeks, receiving careful rotation to allow for even dehydration.