Goro Bedessa

Variety: Landrace

Region: Guji, Ethiopia

Elevation: 2,100 meters

Harvest: January 2024

Notes: Elderberry, blueberry, black tea & floral. 

Goro Bedessa is a very nice example of a wet process Ethiopia Guji coffee, with refined sweetness, and a lingering floral characteristic that makes its mark in the cup. The dry fragrance is laced with an aromatic citrus note, transparent simple syrup sweetness, and delightful floral highlights. The wet aroma has perfumed sweetness that goes from dark honey to lightly caramelized sugars, and the floral aroma makes more of an impression at this stage, indicating a bit of star jasmine. The brew is delicious that hints at simple syrup made with sugar in the raw. 

The coffee comes from small holder coffee farmers in the Goro Bedessa Woreda of Hambela Wamena, a high altitude region that tops out at 2100 meters above sea level. These lots are made up of coffee from several hundred different farmers, most with only a couple hundred coffee trees or less. The people in this region are known as Guji Oromo, and coffee farming has been a core part of the culture in the highland areas for many years.

It's a distinct coffee from Yirga Cheffe, and Sidamo. Geographically, culturally, and in terms of cup flavors, these southern coffees have a different flavor profile while maintaining the same general characteristics; citrus and floral accents, a lively cup character. The station is run by Ismael Hassen. They do a fantastic job controlling quality, consistently providing us with some of our top scoring Ethiopian coffees. Sorting out imperfect coffee cherry starts on delivery, and extends all the way to the drying tables. Farmers must hand sort the cherry for defects before delivering to the washing station. The cherry is then floated in tanks of water to catch any underripe coffee before the processing begins. This particular lot was wet-processed, often simply called "washed". In this process, the cherry is first removed from the seed using a depulping machine. Then, the sticky mucilage layer that surrounds the bean is removed by fermenting it for 24-36 hours in water, after which it is "washed" away with clean water. Finally, the coffee is dried on raised beds for upwards of 2 weeks, depending on the weather.

This was a subscriber exclusive coffee. Cheers friends!