How are the Sidamo Shakisso coffee bean market prices? Which brand of Sidamo coffee is best?

Ethiopian Sidamo Shakisso Washed

Variety: Local Heirloom

Producer: Local small farmers

Flavor: White grape juice, citrus, earl grey tea notes

Sidamo Region

Sidamo coffees are remarkably diverse. Every town's lots taste a little different, because the soil, the microclimate, and the countless native varieties all shift from one slope to the next. The Sidamo growing area lies in southern Ethiopia, where agriculture anchors the local economy and coffee farms wrap around the Great Rift Valley.

Processing Area Introduction

Shakisso sits in the Guji zone of Sidamo, in southern Oromia, bordering Sidama and Gedeo. The land here is pocked with old gold-mining pits, so the coffee fields are riddled with holes that make walking between the plots genuinely hazardous. Shakisso is a distinctive corner of Guji/Sidamo: even by Sidamo standards it is remote, far from most other coffee districts, and gold mining is its other celebrated local product. Tensions over miners, land, and ethnicity also stirred unrest here in 2006, so the area's biggest challenge today is simply finding enough labor to tend the fields and bring in the harvest.

Local smallholders here turned to organic coffee in 2001, working hand in hand with mid-sized producers who know highland forest coffee well. This is one of the micro-regions within Sidamo that carries its own unmistakable identity. Coffee from this area has real individuality, and its lots have repeatedly caught the market's eye. The legendary Ninety Plus bean known as Nekisse originally means "Nectar from Shakisso" — both its origin and its name trace back to this very town.

Flavor Description: Lemon and citrus, bright and crisp acidity, lemon, citrus, white grape juice, blackcurrant, with earl grey tea notes in the finish

Coffee Grading System

Indonesian and African beans share this defect-based grading system. Indonesian beans are split mainly into six grades, G1 through G6. For washed beans the top grades are G1 and G2; for natural beans the top grades are G1 and G3.

What does that mean in practice?

Washed: Grade-1; Grade-2 (G1 > G2)

Natural: Grade-1 and Grade-3 to Grade-5 (G1 > G3 > G4 > G5)

Important Notes:

a) Washed or natural, either can earn Grade-1 — the condition is "zero" defects and a Premium Cup. Whatever the process, Grade-1 is reserved for the finest of specialty coffees or Cup of Excellence lots.

b) The lowest grade for natural Yirgacheffe and Sidamo is Grade-4.

c) Beans of the same grade, say Limu Grade-2, can still be good or bad; it comes down to the exporter's sorting standards and investment.

d) Given today's "zero" defect bar, Grade-1 beans — washed or natural — are extremely rare, since processing costs run high and few suppliers take it on.

Ethiopian Sidamo Shakisso Washed Details

Country: Ethiopia

Grade: G1

Region: Shakisso production area, Guji zone

Roast Degree: Light roast

Processing Method: Washed

Washed coffee rarely carries wild flavors; it is clean and refreshing, and it suits City to Full City roast levels. Some outstanding Ethiopian washed beans sometimes flash distinct notes of uplifting lemon, citrus essential oils, jasmine blossom, and honey, with a more pronounced acidity and a lighter body.

Brewing Recommendations

Hand-pour Sidamo: 15g of coffee, ground to a medium-fine grind size (Kompresso grinder 3.5), V60 dripper, water at 91-93°C. Start with a 30g pour and let it bloom for 27 seconds. Pour up to 105g and pause. Wait until the water level drops halfway before pouring again. Continue slowly until you reach 225g in total. Avoid the tail end. Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, extraction time 2:00.

About Ethiopian Sidamo

"Ethiopian Sidamo" is a single-origin coffee — Arabica grown in Ethiopia's Sidamo province. Like most African coffees, Sidamo shows small gray beans, but what sets it apart is its rich, spicy, wine-like or chocolate-like flavors and its floral aromas. The signature thread running through all Sidamo coffees is lemon and citrus, with bright, crisp acidity. Sidamo also encompasses Yirgacheffe and Guji coffees, both of excellent quality.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you want to taste the wild, floral character of Ethiopia at its most approachable, FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe is the classic starting point. It leads with clear jasmine blossom and bright citrus acidity, and its light, elegant, tea-like body drinks like a clean glass of lemon tea. The Gudingding co-op lot, grown at the southeastern edge of the Yirgacheffe region in the Woka area, sharpens that profile with citrus and lemon lift and delicate white florals.

Natural lots show the other face of Ethiopia. FrontStreet's sun-dried Red Cherry selection picks only fully ripe red cherries and dries them on raised beds, landing on peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon. The sun-dried Hamesu lot from Sidamo features the compact 74158 variety, with perfumed lemon, strawberry, and starfruit sweetness ahead of a soft floral lift. Huakui, grown in the Hambella area of Guji Sidamo and dried on raised beds for 21 days, brings light fermentation wine, florals, citrus, and mango, with a dense honeyed sweetness and a long finish.

FrontStreet's Kafa Forest coffee points to where coffee began: trees grown wild under shade at 1,400-2,100 meters. Light-medium roasted, it shows pronounced white florals on the grind, bright lemon acidity in the cup, and sweet orange and bergamot, with a whisper of melon and nut in the finish and a green-tea texture.