Yirgacheffe Washed Aricha Bean Characteristics and Brewing Methods

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About Project Origin

Sasa Sestic, the 2015 World Barista Champion, launched Project Origin three years ago with his business team at ONA Coffee. This green coffee sourcing project works directly with farmers in impoverished countries and regions to improve their production conditions and pays them purchase prices 20% higher than fair trade prices.

The project also aims to strengthen the connection between roasters and coffee farmers and to guide growers toward producing higher-quality beans. To date, Sasa has built relationships with coffee growers in eight countries, including Brazil, Panama, India, Ethiopia, El Salvador, and Costa Rica.

Flavor Profile

Sweet citrus notes, green berries, peach, longan and red date aroma, honey sweetness, cocoa with subtle spice, full body, and a long-lasting aftertaste

Yirgacheffe Coffee Classification

Yirgacheffe is divided into two main categories by green bean processing method:

Category A: Washed processing, graded under the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) standards as Gr-1 and Gr-2, where the smaller Arabic number means the higher grade. G1 washed Yirgacheffe has a distinctive style, with citrus and floral notes woven through the cup—a flavor nobody can resist.

Category B: Natural processing, graded Gr-1 through Gr-5. Again, the top grade G1 natural Yirgacheffe is bursting with fruit aroma. Opening a bag of freshly roasted G1 natural Yirgacheffe can completely change your idea of what coffee is—only those who have tasted the highest-grade natural Yirgacheffe will believe that coffee is a fruit.

Brewing Method

Hand-poured Yirgacheffe: 15 g of coffee, medium-fine grind (Fuji Royal grind setting 3.5), V60 dripper, water temperature 91-93°C. First pour 30 g of water and bloom for 27 seconds, then pour to 105 g and pause. Wait until the water level drops to half before continuing. Pour slowly until reaching 225 g total, avoiding the tail end. Coffee-to-water ratio 1:15, extraction time 2:00.

Processing Method: Washed

First, farmers pick the coffee cherries and place them in water-filled pools. Because density varies with ripeness, overripe and underripe cherries—along with leaves and twigs—float on the surface while fully ripe cherries sink. This natural sorting screens out the cherries that pass the first round of selection.

The selected ripe cherries then enter the depulper to have their skin and pulp removed.

Next, the beans with their remaining mucilage enter fermentation (fermented by microorganisms in water or air). Once fermentation is complete, the beans in parchment are washed clean in channels. After thorough washing comes drying, with the beans' moisture held at around 12%. They then rest in burlap bags for 2-3 months to stabilize in quality. Finally the parchment is hulled off, and the coffee is ready for sale.

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Aricha G1 Washed

Country: Ethiopia
Grade: G1
Region: Yirgacheffe Gedeo
Altitude: 1900-2100 meters
Variety: Heirloom
Producer: Kebel Aricha
Flavor: Sweet orange, cherry, honey sweetness

This batch of Yirgacheffe was produced at the Kebel Aricha processing station, where roughly 650-700 smallholder farmers from the surrounding area deliver their ripe cherries for processing in exchange for cash.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Aricha is one of Yirgacheffe's most celebrated micro-lots, and it sits squarely in the tradition that made the region famous: white jasmine florals, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a tea-like finish. If this washed G1 is your first Ethiopian coffee, you are starting at the top—FrontStreet's washed Yirgacheffe house coffee shares the same clean, floral style at an accessible price, which is why it has become so many people's introduction to specialty coffee.

Yirgacheffe itself is a small town in Ethiopia's Sidamo province at roughly 1,700-2,100 meters, with coffee grown above 1,800 meters—one of the highest coffee regions on Earth. Within the town's orbit are villages and cooperatives whose lots have made names of their own, such as our washed Guodingding Cooperative coffee from the Worka area: processed in the most traditional washed way, it offers fresh citrus and lemon acidity with jasmine fragrance and green tea and honey tones after a medium-light roast, with none of the traditional bitterness.

If you want to compare processing methods side by side, pair the washed Aricha with FrontStreet's natural Red Cherry: only fully ripe cherries are used, dried whole on raised beds—turned every 2-3 hours in the first days to prevent uneven fermentation, then dried for three to five weeks—yielding citrus acidity, berry-juice sweetness, honeyed depth, and cream-smooth texture over the same floral Yirgacheffe backbone. For brewing the washed lots, use a V60 at 90-91°C, 15 g of coffee at 1:15, and a fine granulated-sugar grind (EK43s at setting 10, 80% pass-through on a #20 sieve), blooming with 30 g of water for 30 seconds before two further pours to about 225 g.