Crown Jewel Ethiopia Daye Bensa Ashenafi Argaw Anaerobic Natural – 1 Lb

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Please Note this is a 1 LB bag of unroasted, green coffee.

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About this coffee

Grower

1500 farmers organized around the Bensa Cooperative

Altitude

1800 - 2200 masl

Variety

Indigenous Landraces & Selections

Soil

Vertisol

Region

Bensa woreda, Sidama zone, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region, Ethiopia

Process

Anaerobic fermentation in cherry, dried as a natural on raised beds in the shade

Harvest

November 2020 - January 2021

Certification

Conventional

Coffee Background

Announcement: we can no longer take Sidama for granted.  

The Sidama Zone has long been considered a kind of gateway to Ethiopia’s southern coffees. This is literally true, as Sidama is the first producing zone one enters on the way south from Addis Ababa. It has also been true in the cup: Sidama has been known for having a robust and stable union of more than 50 coops that turn out predictably honey-like, mouthwatering fully washed coffee year after year, and almost always with earlier availability and lower prices than neighboring Gedeo (a.k.a. “Yirgacheffe”). Perhaps because of its stability, the sprawling zone has also seen little disruption to its union presence and hallmark washed profiles. 

But Sidama, despite its deliciously complex and successful status quo, is reinventing itself, one innovator at a time. For the past three harvests we have witnessed a number of private washing stations establish themselves and start proving that Sidama can compete with the most unique and cutting-edge coffees anywhere. This coffee is one such example. Ashenafi Argaw, a former director of the Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (SCFCU), now operates a private export business called Ardent Coffee. Through his close relationship with SCFCU, his former employer, he rents time at processing sites within the union’s Bensa cooperative for small-scale processing.  

The site used for this coffee is located near Daye Bensa town. The site accepts cherry from 1500 farmers across the Shantawene, Bombe, and Hamasho communities in central Bensa. Along with coffee, farmers in this area commonly grow bananas, citrus, and enset—a fruit-less relative of the banana tree whose pulp is scraped and packed into cakes, fermented underground, and then sliced and toasted as kocho, a staple starch. Farms here surpass 2200 meters and the entire area is surrounded on its eastern side by the virgin Harenna Forest National Park. These are some of the highest elevations in all of Sidama, and some of the most remote. Harvest here pushes past the end of the calendar year. 

It’s a little mind-bending to think of taking the legacy genetics and terroir of a place like the Bensa district and then exaggerating select characteristics through processing. But here we are. Despite the shock for cuppers like us in finding coffees as unique as this one from well-known Sidama districts, it feels right, like a natural progression, the way single-farm exports in Yirgacheffe and new organic estates in Guji are starting to frame the next generation of Ethiopia’s coffee. 

This particular coffee is essentially a procedurally perfect late-harvest natural process with a unique stage of careful cherry maceration. Under the instruction of Ashenafi, cherry is brought to the processing site within no more than 8 hours of picking, inspected, floated for density, and then drained. Once initial selection is complete, the cherry is placed in a covered tank to ferment for 48 hours with limited oxygen exposure, during which a tube inserted into the tank allowed carbon dioxide to escape.  

After the cherry fermentation step, all fruit is shade-dried as a typical natural, spread into a single layer on raised beds for the first 48 hours to allow for even drying of the outer cherry skin, which by now is partially decomposed from the anaerobic environment. After skin drying, the coffee will be piled 2-3 cherries deep for the remainder of the drying stage, during which Ashenafi assigns one full-time manager to each individual drying bed, to oversee cherry rotation and monitor the drying progression. Fully-dried cherry is then rested for 5 weeks in fresh GrainPro bags prior to final dry milling, to allow for moisture equilibration and for flavors to continue to deepen. 

Oxygen-deprived, or “anaerobic” fermentation environments like the above have gained traction among processing wonks in coffee for the unique flavors and tanginess they can add, as well as creating exaggerated characteristics in the cup compared to what we’re used to. In this case, Ashenafi has created a distinctly tart and berry-forward natural with high acid and fruit articulation. It is a digression from the mainstream for sure, and an objectively successful result.