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Discovering Sidamo Coffee

Anyone who loves coffee has almost certainly tasted beans from Ethiopia. The country's best-known growing regions include Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, Kochere, Harar, and Guji, and Sidamo stands out for its elegant, delicate, and remarkably varied floral and fruity aromas.

Sidamo lies in southern Ethiopia at elevations between 4,600 and 7,200 feet (1,400-2,194 meters), in the southernmost stretch of the Ethiopian highlands along the border with Kenya. It is tempting to assume the African highlands must be dry and to reach for natural-processed beans because of that, but the processing stations here handle both washed and natural lots.

Sidamo is more than a single village. It is a province, and a large one: towering mountains, plateaus, valleys, and plains give the area a wide range of terrain, while generous rainfall and fertile soil produce excellent green coffee. The washed lots in particular are clean and pure, with a bright fruit acidity that stays mellow and full. It is no surprise that so many of the Ethiopian coffees people try first are washed.

A friend once pressed a natural-processed lot from Sidamo on me. Every Ethiopian coffee I had tasted until then was washed, so I treated it as a novelty, yet half a pound and a handful of brews later I was hooked. For a while, whenever I craved Sidamo, that natural lot was the one I reached for.

Drima Zede: "The Best Approach"

Drima Zede, also written Zhumaang, means "Best Approach" in the local language. According to the producer, the line was developed from Ninety Plus's years of experience, and the name announces that it comes as close as any lot to the classic natural-processed Yirgacheffe profile. It calls to mind the series Ninety Plus first introduced around 2007.

Ninety Plus is an internationally recognized green coffee company known for rare and unusual lots. Joseph Brodsky formally founded it in 2007, and from the following year onward its coffees have appeared among the winners of competitions around the world. At the 2013 World Barista Championship, six finalists brewed Ninety Plus green coffee, including competitors from Italy, South Korea, and Canada. Careful cultivation and processing, distinctive varieties, and a unique grading system have made Ninety Plus a benchmark in the specialty green coffee market.

A Sidamo Coffee Bean Worth Trying

The Ninety Plus Drima Zede beans roasted by FrontStreet Coffee hold up on both brand and quality, and the value is just as convincing: a half-pound (227-gram) package costs about 90 yuan. At 15 grams per pour-over serving, one package makes roughly 15 cups, or about 6 yuan a cup, next to the many tens of yuan a cafe will charge for a single cup.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the floral, tea-like side of Ethiopian coffee is what draws you in, the natural next step is Yirgacheffe. It is a small town in southern Ethiopia, within Sidamo province, sitting at roughly 1,700-2,100 meters, with coffee trees planted above 1,800 meters. For a first encounter with the region, FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe is the classic entry point: white jasmine on the nose, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a clean tea-like finish, at a price that makes it easy to drink every day. Its flavors are so distinctive that in 2010 the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange separated Yirgacheffe from Sidamo as a category in its own right.

For something a little more specific, look to FrontStreet Coffee's Gedeb cooperative beans from the Woka area at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe. Gedeb was once part of the Woka cooperative under the YCFCU umbrella before becoming a single-origin lot, and its traditional washed processing keeps the flavors transparent: fresh, bright citrus and lemon acidity with elegant white florals and none of the bitterness people often expect. If you would rather stay on the natural-processed path, FrontStreet Coffee's natural Red Cherry lot picks only fully ripe cherries and dries them on raised beds for three to five weeks, turning them every few hours at the start. The result keeps the signature Yirgacheffe character while adding tropical fruit, berry-juice body, honeyed sweetness, and a creamy texture.

For brewing, a V60 with 15 grams of coffee at a 1:15 ratio works beautifully. Use water at 90-91°C and a grind around EK43s setting 10, roughly fine-sugar size, with about 80% passing a No. 20 sieve. Begin with a 30-gram pour for a 30-second bloom, then add 95 grams (to about 125 grams on the scale) over roughly a minute; when the water level falls to two-thirds of the bed, add the remaining 100 grams to reach about 225 grams. Aim to finish the pour around 1:35 and complete the drawdown in 2:00-2:10 before removing the dripper.