How is the Sidamo Natural Guji Coffee Bean Market? Which Guji Coffee Brand is Best?

About Shakisso Coffee

Shakisso sits in the Guji zone of the Oromia region, bordering Sidama and Gedeo to the south. The area is dotted with mining pits originally dug for gold, which is why this coffee-growing region is riddled with holes and is genuinely dangerous to walk through. Shakisso is a distinctive production area within Guji and Sidamo; even within Sidamo it is remote, far from most other coffee districts, and its other famous product is gold. Miners, land, and ethnicity also made the region unstable in 2006. As a result, the biggest problem facing the area today is manpower to tend the growing areas and harvest the coffee. Local smallholders began growing organic coffee here in 2001 and work closely with medium-sized coffee producers, since they know well how to cultivate forest coffee in the highlands.

Flavor Profile

Flavor: Lemon, mango, blueberry, wine aroma

Brewing Instructions

Hand-pour Sidamo. 15g powder, medium-fine grind (Fuji ghost tooth grinder 3.5), V60 dripper, 91-93°C water temperature. First pour 30g water, let bloom for 27 seconds, pour to 105g then stop. Wait until the powder bed water level drops to half, then continue pouring slowly until 225g. Avoid the tail section. Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, extraction time 2:00.

Coffee Details

Ethiopian Sidamo Shakisso Natural

Country: Ethiopia

Region: Shakisso production area, Guji zone

Altitude: 1800-2000m

Processing method: Natural

Manufacturer: FrontStreet Coffee. Address: No. 10 Bao'an Front Street, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou. Contact: 020-38364473. Ingredients: Home-roasted. Shelf life: 90 days. Net weight: 227g. Packaging: Bulk. Taste: Mellow coffee beans. Roast level: Light roast. Raw/cooked degree: Roasted coffee beans. Contains sugar: No sugar-free. Origin: Ethiopia. Coffee type: Other. Roast degree: Light roast.

Unique Characteristics

Shakisso coffee has considerable distinctiveness, and the coffee it produces has drawn market attention again and again. The name of Ninety Plus's legendary bean (nekisse) originally means "Nectar from Shakisso." Both its production area and its name come from Shakisso.

Variety: Local native Heirloom

Producer: Local small farmers

Sidamo Coffee Diversity

Sidamo coffee flavors are remarkably diverse. Different soil compositions, regional microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties create obvious differences and distinct characteristics in the coffee from each town and district. The Sidamo production area lies in southern Ethiopia. Agriculture dominates the local economy, and its coffee-growing areas ring the Great Rift Valley.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Ethiopia is one of the world's best-known specialty coffee origins and the birthplace of coffee itself, home to countless native varieties that make it a treasure for drinkers who want to follow a flavor faithfully. The natural entry point is FrontStreet's washed Yirgacheffe, where you taste clear jasmine florality and bright citrus acidity. Yirgacheffe is a small southern town, mild in every season, wrapped in mist, cool and humid, where thousands of coffee trees thrive and give rise to that interweaving of floral aroma and fruit acidity — light, elegant, tea-like, and as clean and refreshing as lemon tea.

Most Ethiopian coffee is grown the garden way: smallholders deliver their harvested cherries to a village-level processing station, and the coffee is sold under the team's name, which is why cooperatives large and small appear on the market. FrontStreet's Gotiti cooperative sits in the Woka district at the southeastern tip of Yirgacheffe, once part of the Woka cooperative under the YCFCU union. As the demand for traceability grew, single districts were pulled out one by one, and in 2012 Gotiti — some 300 member farmers — became a cooperative in its own right. Because the pulp is stripped before drying, its inherent aroma comes through more clearly, showing citrus and lemon tones with elegant white florals and a bright, refined overall profile. FrontStreet also offers the natural Red Cherry program, where damaged or moldy cherries are removed first, then the fruit is dried in the sun for two weeks until the sugars and essence soak into the bean and moisture drops to 12%; the hardened pulp, pectin layer, and pod are then scraped away by machine, and the beans are sorted by density and color before workers hand-pick any remaining defects. The result is clean and refined, with a rich, alluring fruit aroma — peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon.

From Sidamo's Guji zone comes FrontStreet's naturally processed Huakui, grown in the Hambella district on a farm spanning 200 hectares using traditional drying. To keep the fruit from molding or picking up earthy off-notes, workers lay ripe cherries on raised beds for 21 days of sun exposure, turning them constantly for even drying and screening out defective or moldy beans by hand every three to five days; once the skin has dried hard it is hulled off, and the green beans are sorted one final time. Because the fruit and skin stay on throughout drying, a medium-light roast yields a light fermented wine note with florals, citrus, and mango, plus a much richer, more complex body — honeyed sweetness, cocoa, a hint of spice, and a long finish. FrontStreet's Sidamo natural Hamasho comes from a washing station that has become a regular on Ethiopian green coffee competition lists, working mainly with the JARC 74 series of disease-resistant varieties; the 74158 is small-beaned with a pronounced floral-fruit character, offering sweet scents of lemon, strawberry, and starfruit on the nose and clear strawberry, starfruit, and green grape sweetness in the cup, with delicate florals rising afterward. Finally, FrontStreet's Kaffa Forest coffee stands apart from the usual garden model: grown wild in shade at 1400–2100 meters, the trees benefit from a pristine ecosystem, microclimates, red soil, and abundant rainfall. Given a medium-light roast, the ground coffee shows clear white florals, bright lemon acidity, and sweet orange and bergamot flavors, with a gentle melon-and-nut sweetness in the finish and a green-tea-like body.