Yirgacheffe Coffee Bean Roast Level Flavor Description Characteristics

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Ethiopian Coffee: The Birthplace of Coffee Excellence

Ethiopia is the country where coffee was first discovered, and to this day, many wild coffee plants still grow in the original forests for farmers to harvest. Ethiopia is a country plagued by poverty, drought, and constant civil wars, yet it remains one of the most important coffee-producing countries in terms of quality and yield. Ethiopian coffee can be divided into two main processing methods: 1. Natural washed processing and 2. Natural sun-dried processing. Today, in every region of Ethiopia—whether cooperatives or even small coffee farms—both processing methods are used simultaneously. This applies not only to the well-known Yirgacheffe region or the Sidamo province in Taiwan, but also throughout Ethiopia, where coffee development is rapidly advancing. Different regions not only create variations in coffee through processing methods, but the same processing method can also produce different aromas and flavors due to different technique adjustments, often creating surprising illusions. The sun-dried beans from FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe and FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo have different aromas, but both maintain characteristics that define their processing methods: washed processed coffee beans feature gentle, low-profile aromas, soft and understated lemon acidity, high flavor consistency, and excel in mouthfeel, while natural processed coffee beans display strong, prominent aromas, less obvious lemon acidity, complex and varied flavors, and specialize in floral or fruity characteristics.

Light Roast (City)

When you hold a handful of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe natural beans, you'll immediately smell the intoxicating fermented aroma of plums and strawberries. During roasting, it emits the sweet fragrance of baked biscuits, and after grinding, the strawberry biscuit aroma can be detected from far away. After brewing, the coffee reveals a soft, comfortable strawberry fruit wine fragrance. The bright fruit acidity at the forefront briefly intensifies to maximize the aroma before gently subsiding. As the coffee cools, the plum and strawberry wine fermentation notes develop layered complexity, while the aftertaste fills the mouth with the sweetness of kumquat preserves. Storing the coffee beans properly for 7-9 days allows the strawberry aroma to gradually awaken and become vivid and prominent, while the fruit acidity becomes smooth and gradual.

Dark Roast (Typical C)

Ending 20-40 seconds after the first crack is the darkest roast level for FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe natural beans, which doesn't produce bitterness due to the varying moisture content characteristics of natural processed beans. At this roast level, the coffee has the aroma of chocolate chiffon cake, the sweetness of tropical fruits like pineapple and mango, and a smooth, milky candy-like creamy texture. The cooled FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe natural beans offer the refined, sweet smoothness of chocolate syrup that brings happiness.

Yirgacheffe: The Evolution of Excellence

Yirgacheffe was originally Ethiopia's finest region for washed coffee beans. However, in the past couple of years, because natural processed beans from Misty Valley have become very popular in the coffee market, many estates that originally produced washed beans have also started producing natural processed beans. This has led Yirgacheffe natural beans to develop into bolder, stronger, and more dazzling coffee beans that attract all coffee lovers who appreciate natural processed beans, continuously breaking all aroma limits.

Kochere: A Premium Micro-Region

Kochere is a small micro-region located about 25 kilometers southeast of Yirgacheffe. The harvested coffee beans come from local small-scale coffee farmers, representing a collective of numerous individual farmers. These small farmers typically cultivate coffee on areas averaging about 1 hectare, at altitudes between 1800-2000 meters. The coffee varieties are mainly a mix of Typica and Heirloom (local native varieties). Because this region has relatively advanced raw bean water processing equipment, it has always demonstrated high performance in the field of washed processing, earning praise for its clean sweetness with complex honey and citrus notes. The local production model involves small-scale coffee farmers directly delivering each harvest of red cherries to nearby cooperative washing stations for unified processing. Since Ethiopia introduced washed processing technology in the 1970s, the Kochere region now primarily focuses on washed processing. After the washing stations sort and grade red cherry-colored coffee fruits, they directly remove the pulp for washed fermentation. After washing, the parchment beans are placed on racks to air-dry naturally. When humidity reaches 12% or below, they are directly sent to the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) warehouse in Awassa for cupping grading and quantity processing. Typically, washed processed beans are stored in parchment form until dehulling is performed just before export.

This batch of FrontStreet Coffee's Kochere was rated G1—the highest grade by ECX standards. From raw bean appearance, consistency, and freshness to dry aroma and flavor, it demonstrates excellent quality. The aroma performance is exceptionally rich, displaying the regional characteristics of FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe, emitting elegant and enchanting flower-like perfume fragrance, with waves of floral notes, bright citrus fruit acidity, lemon, berry, and honey's sweet and sour aroma. Jasmine, orange, caramel, grape, vanilla, honey, and floral notes combine to create a clean, balanced mouthfeel with a lively, varied, and lingering sweet fruity aftertaste.

The Rise of Ethiopian Coffee Excellence

In recent years, many emerging small regions or cooperatives in Ethiopia's Sidamo and Yirgacheffe regions have started selling under their own cooperative or estate names in the international market. This shows confidence in their coffee production and hopes to establish brands and loyalty in the international coffee market. Coffee farmers insist on harvesting mature coffee beans and rigorously controlling every process step. Both natural washed and natural sun-dried methods show outstanding performance, producing unexpectedly fragrant aromas and excellent mouthfeel. I believe this is why Ethiopian coffee makes coffee lovers look forward to it every year. For example, the Operation Cherry Red program assisted by the Dutch government—Koret in 2008 and Balemaya estate in 2009—both emitted magnificent strawberry biscuit aromas that left deep impressions on the world. In recent years, Ethiopian natural processed beans have further strengthened this characteristic.

Ethiopian Coffee Grading System

Ethiopian coffee is graded as G1, G2 for washed beans (G1 being the highest grade for washed beans), and G3, G4 for natural beans (G3 being the highest grade for natural beans). Ethiopian coffee raw beans are divided into five grades, based on the number of defective beans per 300 grams:

• Grade 1: 0-3 defects
• Grade 2: 4-12 defects
• Grade 3: 13-25 defects
• Grade 4: 26-45 defects
• Grade 5: 46-90 defects

About Yirgacheffe

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe grows in the Sidamo region of southwestern Ethiopia. The coffee beans are small to medium in size, with raw beans displaying a light yellow-green color and complete, beautiful shapes. It holds a representative position among specialty coffees in East Africa.

Under the current ECX system, the Yirgacheffe area has been divided into four sub-regions: Yirgachefe, Wenago, Kochere, and Genlena Abay. The soil here is fertile, with average altitudes above 1800 meters, making it a high-altitude region with significant day-night temperature differences. The production methods of each region, combined with the unique local native variety coffee gardens, create different flavor profiles for each batch of coffee beans, making them quite distinctive and unique.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe is a high-quality washed Arabica bean with unique and bright fruit sweetness and acidity. Immediately upon entry, you can feel the fresh and bright aroma. This highly distinctive FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe, with its bold floral notes and lemon acidity, richly layered flavors perfectly interpret the coffee's character. It also creates an illusion reminiscent of tea when drinking. Therefore, many people also say that FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe doesn't taste like coffee, but rather like a soft, pleasant fruit tea. It can be both elegant and exuberant, with precise balance between simplicity and complexity, earning it the beautiful Japanese nickname "Queen of Coffee."

Originally, FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe was famous and primarily produced using washed processing, but now natural processed FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe has gained enthusiastic market acceptance due to its rich berry sweetness. Due to the significant increase in demand, natural FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe production has also increased substantially.

Besides being famous worldwide for the Mocha beans from the Harar region, Ethiopia also produces Arabica washed coffee beans from the small, high-altitude area of Yirgacheffe in the Sidamo region of its south-central part, which are rated as the finest among African coffee beans.

The name Yirgacheffe means "single ethnic settlement." The producing area is located in the Sidamo growing region of south-central Ethiopia, at altitudes over 2000 meters in the Gedeb zone, home to the Gedeb people. It is one of the few washed Arabica coffee beans in Ethiopia. After medium roasting, it perfectly presents fruit acidity with unique flower tea and lemon peel-like aromas.

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe inherits the Mocha series characteristic of uneven bean sizes, but because it uses washed processing in the Sidamo region, the bean appearance is more beautiful than naturally processed Mocha beans, while retaining the Mocha's floral notes and FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe's unique wine-like醇感.

The FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Natural G-1 grade from the Idido processing station represents the highest grade Yirgacheffe on the market. Yirgacheffe's grading system separates natural and washed beans for grading. The highest grade for natural beans is typically G3 or G4, while washed beans are mostly G2 grade. However, Abdullah Bagersh, owner of the Idido processing station, adopted a new processing method. After coffee fruit harvesting, he places it on drying racks for 48 hours, with constant manual turning of the beans, followed by manual removal of defective beans, successfully creating FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Natural G1 grade coffee beans and the highest grade washed G1.

On the raw bean burlap bags, you can see the Bagersh logo. Bagersh has now been passed down to the third generation, growing in the Aricha Yirgacheffe area at approximately 6,000 feet/1,800 meters altitude, while the Idido processing station is also exclusive to the Bagersh family.

Dry aroma: Fresh lemon sweetness, citrus fragrance, berry fruit acidity. When hot water is added, waves of milk candy, lemon sweetness with milky fragrance, citrus, and long-lasting sweet aroma emerge.

Slurping: Clean, plum fragrance, very refreshing sweetness with some orange aroma. After slurping, the aftertaste retains lemongrass fragrance.

Kochere Region Details

Kochere is located in the Gedeo region of southern Ethiopia. This area's most famous regions are Yirgacheffe and Kochere. Because the coffee produced in Yirgacheffe has special, unique flavors that are widely loved, it forms its own category in product classification and always occupies a place in the global specialty coffee market.

Yirgacheffe itself is a small town in the Sidama province, with three neighboring small regions: Wenago, Kochere, and Gelena Abaya. Because the coffee flavors produced are nearly equivalent to Yirgacheffe, Kochere is also classified within the Yirgacheffe regional classification. Ethiopia implemented new trading and grading systems in November 2009. Besides Yirgacheffe, three sub-regions were added: Wenago, Kochere, and Genlena/Abaya, indicating that the flavors of these three regions are extremely refined and worthy of further subdivision.

About Misty Valley

Growing in Misty Valley gave this bean its beautiful name. In the small town of Yirgacheffe in Ethiopia's Sidamo province, many coffee trees are planted. Abandoning the sun-dried processing method used in Sidamo ten years ago, Misty Valley farmers switched to washed processing for coffee beans, which also made Yirgacheffe famous. Now, Yirgacheffe is not just a place name but has become a well-known synonym for coffee beans.

According to local elders, although Misty Valley's Yirgacheffe is famous worldwide for washed processing, the area still primarily uses traditional natural processing methods because local residents believe natural processing allows coffee beans to produce an indescribably beautiful flavor. Due to Yirgacheffe's great fame, the country has incorporated the coffee brewing ceremony into banquets for welcoming foreign guests. They don't care whether the beans are whole or full, directly placing coffee beans in iron pans for roasting. At this moment, whether the roasting violates the taboo of being over-dark doesn't matter much. Under this traditional and wonderful ceremony, even if the beans have inconsistent colors, they can still brew an unforgettable, wonderful taste.

Important Notice :

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