One of the World's Three Great Coffees: How to Drink Ethiopian Harar Coffee? Is Harar Coffee Delicious?

Professional coffee knowledge exchange.

Ethiopian Coffee Origins

Most Ethiopian coffee is grown on plateaus above 2,000 meters. The major producing regions include Jimma, Gambela, Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and Harar. Among these, the Black Mountain region of Harar remains the world's only place where truly wild coffee grows; the wild beans from there are auctioned in London every year at astonishing prices.

Harar: The Ancient Holy City

Harar lies in eastern Ethiopia and is an ancient historic city — one of the four holy cities of Islam. The coffee it produces is traditionally divided into three types: Longberry Harar, Shortberry Harar, and Mocha Harar. Longberry Harar is the most popular and the highest in quality: full-bodied beans with a rich wine-like aroma, noticeable acidity, and a heavy, deep flavor.

The "Wild Rose" of Coffee

Harar coffee is known as the "wild rose" of coffee and is entirely handmade in its production. Its flavor profile is a mixed one — mellow, with medium to light acidity — and, most remarkably, it has the lowest caffeine content of any coffee, at roughly 1.13%. Harar is also special in another way: its flavor is assertive, always ready to conquer your taste buds and hard to forget. The earthy note is characteristic of dry-processed coffee, and it is the very reason some people adore Harar while others reject it. Because post-harvest processing varies, Ethiopian Harar flavors differ too — some lots are heavy-bodied with low acidity and strong wine notes, while others are fragrant and smooth with light fruit aromas.

Wild Aroma and Rich Flavors

Harar coffee has a wild character and rich flavors reminiscent of red wine fermentation.

It would be no exaggeration to call it one of the world's finest coffees — it is simply little known abroad for want of branding and fancy packaging.

Traditional Ethiopian Coffee Culture

Although Ethiopia is the world's oldest coffee-growing country and keeps the most ancient coffee culture, farming remains mostly small-scale and family-run, using time-honored cultivation techniques. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are never used, which makes Ethiopian coffee — like Yemeni Mocha — the natural choice for anyone who prefers their coffee untouched by chemicals.

The Unique Character of Harar Coffee

Harar coffee is intensely aromatic. A top-quality Harar should show fruit aromas (blueberry or apricot) along with jasmine, maple, leather, and spice notes — good Harar beans smell, quite literally, like an Arabian spice market. In the cup you find lively chocolate tones and a certain fruit-wine character. The coffee is remarkably variable, too: not only does quality shift from year to year, but even bags from the same harvest can differ. One year the crop smells of blueberries, the next the blueberry is gone entirely; one vintage drinks like a refreshing tea, the next is heavier and more pungent. Harar is a natural, wild coffee finished with traditional dry processing.

MAO is an excellent Ethiopian coffee importer. One year's beans, exported as early as late February, lacked the tropical fruit flavors of previous samples and differed noticeably from the pre-shipment lots. In short, the quality of this hand-processed coffee is not perfectly stable — but because it tastes so good, small variations are easy to forgive. The aromatics are still superb. Though Harar's body is on the light side, its flavors are irresistible: brown-sugar sweetness reminiscent of dried figs, with cardamom fragrance set against an earthy backdrop.

About FrontStreet Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee is a roastery with a small shop but a remarkably diverse range of beans — famous and obscure alike — with online store service available.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Harar's wild side intrigues you, Ethiopia's most celebrated origin — Yirgacheffe — deserves a place on your shelf too. Yirgacheffe is a small town in the Sidamo province of southern Ethiopia at roughly 1,700-2,100 meters, with coffee grown above 1,800 meters, making it one of the highest coffee regions on earth. Once a wetland, it became a byword for Ethiopian specialty coffee thanks to its unmistakable white florals and lemon-citrus acidity; in 2010 its fame grew so great that the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange split it off from Sidamo as its own designation. The classic FrontStreet Coffee Washed Yirgacheffe, with white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a tea-like finish at a friendly price, remains the best first step into Ethiopian coffee.

For more character, the FrontStreet Coffee Idido Cooperative — from the Worka area at Yirgacheffe's southeastern edge, an independent cooperative since 2012 and washed in the most traditional way — offers clean, luminous citrus-lemon acidity with jasmine fragrance and none of the traditional bitterness. And the FrontStreet Coffee Natural Red Cherry, made from fully ripe cherries dried whole on raised beds for three to five weeks and turned every 2-3 hours in the early days to prevent uneven fermentation, keeps classic Yirgacheffe character while adding tropical fruit: citrus acidity, berry juiciness, honeyed sweetness, and a creamy smoothness. To brew: V60, 90-91°C water, 15g of coffee at 1:15, ground to fine-granulated-sugar size (80% pass-through on a #20 sieve); bloom with 30g of water for 30 seconds, pour to 125g within about a minute, then finish to 225g by 1:35, draining fully in 2:00-2:10.