Post-Roast: Ethiopia Photo Blog

Our Ethiopia Chelchele has been the biggest seller these past couple of weeks, so we wanted to take this time to reflect on a past origin trip of ours where the company was hosted by the exporter - Testi Coffee - who manages a handful of wet mills in Ethiopia with the intent on working with the farming communities and growing the community around them.

The washing station we were hosted at for a night was their washing station, Aricha.

Below we see raised beds that are prepped and ready for coffee to be dried 

From sun up to sun down, coffee in cherry is being delivered from surrounding farmers in the area which is then processed within 24 hours of delivery. For the washed process as we see happening below, cherry is rinsed, depulped, and then moved to fermentation tanks to ferments and make mucilage left on the seed easier to remove for the drying process.

Above is cherry being rinsed and piled before depulping for the washed process

Below is the work of the depulper taking cherry off the coffee seed

 

Above is coffee after depulping in fermentation 

Below we see empty fermentation holds and cherry that has been depulped on the left getting fed to the compost

After fermentation is completed, green coffee is able to be rinsed and then moved to raised beds to start the drying process.

 

 Below washed coffee is being sorted by hand 

For the natural process below, whole cherry is moved to raised beds to start the drying process, which can take weeks depending on moisture content, and weather conditions.

Above, coffee is starting to take on a different color as it dried in cherry and becoming more dull. Once it is fully dried, it gets moved to the dry mill in burlap bag as seen below to remove the dried cherry off the seed.

Mills have commonality in how they process coffee, but the origin, region, terroir, how large they are in scale, how many small farmers are delivering cherry, and so much more are all varying factors in the end cup. Below are more images showing different mills

 

And of course, no origin trip is complete without the dogs!

 

Stay tuned for the next photo-blog when we take a peek at coffee from Peru. Until then, stay colorful! 

- Bryant