Characteristics and Taste of Sun-Dried Yirgacheffe Aricha? Flavor Description? Proper Brewing Method?

FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Natural Yirgacheffe Aricha: Characteristics, Taste and Flavor Description

Country: Ethiopia

Region: Aricha / Yirgacheffe

Variety: Wild and naturally cultivated

Processing: Natural sun-dried / Idido Processing Station

Ethiopian Origins

Since 2000, Ninety Plus has been searching for wild Gesha (Geisha) varieties in Ethiopia. The wild varieties from the Beloya and Aricha regions established Ninety Plus's reputation for premium green beans.

The coffee is named after the harvesting area, "Aricha," because it is collected from native forests at an altitude of 1850 meters.

Flavor Description: Cherry, peach, rich jam, cream, passion fruit

Dry Aroma: Cherry, berries, plum

Wet Aroma: Intense, assertive floral and fruit aromas

FrontStreet Coffee's Natural Yirgacheffe Aricha is a stunning coffee, so rich in flavor that it has earned the title "the ultimate fruit bomb." It carries gentle citrus aromas with berry and peach notes, a smooth mouthfeel with creamy fragrance, wrapped around lemon and grapefruit acidity. The aftertaste offers rich variation, with the floral notes its ultimate expression.

(Note: NINETY Plus is a supplier of premium specialty coffee green beans with cupping scores above 90 points.)

Unlike most companies that buy green coffee on the open market, it builds a complete system covering variety, cultivation, processing, roasting and brewing. Information from every stage of that system feeds back into continuous quality improvement. Tracing the coffee back to the source of the production line, it establishes partnerships with producers. Company employees even roll up their sleeves and work alongside local farmers, trying to stabilize quality and yield, and it carries out replanting and green-bean processing improvements through production and marketing partnerships. It mainly supplies exquisitely processed, special-variety green coffee from Ethiopian and Panamanian origins.

Small in quantity but superior in quality, the names more familiar to the market include Aricha and Beloya, two coffees with unusual fruit flavors, as well as rising stars such as Nekisse and Kernaye, which have caused sensations in the coffee world one after another.

A Unique Geographical Environment

Yirgacheffe is a small town in Ethiopia at an altitude of 1700-2100 meters. It is one of the highest coffee-growing regions in the world and is synonymous with Ethiopian specialty coffee. Lake Turkana, Lake Abaya and Lake Chamo bring abundant moisture to the area. In the Rift Valley, represented by the Misty Valley, fog permeates year-round. With spring-like seasons, gentle breezes and a cool, humid climate, thousands of coffee varieties thrive and multiply, nurturing the unique terroir of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, where floral and fruit aromas intertwine in ever-changing, ambiguous patterns.

In the Yirgacheffe region there are many high-quality coffee processing stations, and many coffees have become a hundred times more valuable because of them. FrontStreet Coffee's Natural Yirgacheffe Aricha, from the Kebel Aricha Mill, is one of them. This coffee, which we often call ARICHA beans, is processed by the Kebel Aricha Processing Station using an exquisite natural method and was designated Gr.1, or G1, Ethiopia's highest coffee grade by ECX, earning it the title "King of Fruits."

FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Natural Yirgacheffe Aricha (Yirgacheffe Aricha Grade 1) beans are yellow-green in color, typical of natural-process coffee. The beans are uniform, full and have few defects.

They are exported in regular burlap packaging printed with basic coffee information (processing station, exporter, ICO code, processing method, region), with agricultural plastic bags inside the burlap. This FrontStreet Coffee Natural Yirgacheffe Aricha coffee shows its character best when roasted light and slow.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Aricha's fruit-bomb character is the natural process at its most expressive, and FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe lineup lets you explore the region from both sides. FrontStreet Washed Yirgacheffe is the classic everyday bean, known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity and a tea-like body, and at an affordable price it is the first bean many people buy when starting with specialty coffee.

For a fuller, fruitier natural, FrontStreet Sun-Dried Red Cherry uses only fully ripe cherries, sun-dried for three to five weeks and turned every two to three hours early on to avoid uneven heating and over-fermentation. It has both the classic Yirgacheffe character and a tropical fruit sweetness, with citrus acidity, berry juiciness, honey sweetness and a creamy smoothness.

If you want the cleaner, more floral side of the region, FrontStreet Gedeb Cooperative, from the Gedeb village in Yirgacheffe's Worka area, is a traditional washed coffee with no harsh bitterness, carrying fresh, bright citrus and lemon acidity and jasmine fragrance. Brewing suggestion: V60 dripper, 90-91°C, 15g of coffee, a 1:15 ratio and a grind at EK43s setting 10 (fine sugar, 80% passing a No. 20 sieve); bloom with 30g for 30 seconds, add 95g over about a minute, then add the remaining 100g when the water drops to two-thirds of the bed, finishing around 2:00-2:10.