Yirgacheffe Koke Shalaye Ethiopia. Heirloom. Washed.

Every bean has a story
Koke Shalaye is a coffee from the Yirgacheffee region of Ethiopia. This exceptional coffee is the cultivation result of a community of dedicated local producers.

KOKE

When you visit a coffee farm, you expect to see lush coffee trees with a lot of leaves, all planted in neat rows for maximum efficiency, and well pruned for increased yields. But should you visit the forest in Koke, you might find your jaw drop, just a little. The trees are lanky, they’re thin and have several trunks extending from the ground. They are not so much planted as much as they grow wherever they choose to spawn from the earth.

This is the visual definition of wild coffee: natural mutations of Arabica trees that speckle the wild forest that grows dense and overhead around the hills surrounding the washing stations. Red dirt roads lead the way to raised drying beds that sit where the land allows it to be flat, while the sun beams down across the low, humid, dry air, infusing the flavours of the cherry into the green bean, creating what we inevitably know will be incredibly delicious tasting coffees. Coffee grown from unpruned, unplanted, wild varietal trees.

KOKE SHALAYE PROCESSING

Coffees in the Yirgacheffe region grow in small-holder farmers’ backyards (known as ‘garden  coffee’).

Smallholder farmers take the herries to the washing station where lots are combined. The team at the washing station pulps the coffee and separates floaters before taking them into large tanks for fermentation. Only cherries measuring between 18–22°Brix pass the test.

They cover the beans in water and wet-ferment them for 12-24 hours to remove mucilage. After fermentation, they rinse the beans thoroughly in channels to remove the remaining mucilage and further separate any floaters.

After that, the team moves the beans to African beds under the sun to dry for 10-15 days until moisture level reaches 10-12%. On very hot days and over night, they also may cover the beans in plastic to control the drying rate. Dried beans are stored in parchment for protection until milling and export preparation where further hand and colour sorting is conducted to improve overall quality.

As a minimum the teams on the ground do a triple-pass through a colour sorter and a triple-pass through hand-sorting tables to improve overall qualitywhere further hand and colour sorting is
conducted to improve overall quality.

 

If you enjoy coffees from Ethiopia, we recommend you give our other Heirloom coffee, Koke Konga Jasper  a try!