What is Ethiopia's Red Cherry Project? How Should Coffee Beans from the Red Cherry Project Be Roasted?

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Operation Cherry Red

Operation Cherry Red is a project focused on refining the quality of small-scale farms in Ethiopia, primarily aimed at encouraging farmers and bringing surprises to roasters. Trabocca, the largest coffee bean merchant in the Netherlands, invites all farms to produce small batches of beans before the harvest season, limiting selection to only 100% fully ripe red coffee cherries. Because this will produce better flavor in the brewed coffee, careful, keen-eyed, and hardworking Ethiopian women are important drivers of the Red Cherry Project. Due to the extra care taken in harvesting and selection, these coffees command relatively higher market prices.

After processing at the origin, Red Cherry Project coffee beans are immediately packaged in plastic inner bags or vacuum-sealed, then transported to Djibouti to await shipment. Through real-time monitoring, safe transportation, and other methods, they strive for perfect quality. When Trabocca receives the coffee, they make further selections from it. Farms that pass cupping quality tests conducted by both Ethiopian and Dutch offices, meeting the standards, receive high bonuses. A cupping score of 88 points or above is required to qualify as good coffee in the Red Cherry Project. The promoters of the Red Cherry Project have also returned all profits earned over the past few years to the cooperative farms.

FrontStreet Coffee's Roasting Recommendations

Red Cherry Project

Adopt a fast-roasting approach: set the drum temperature to 200°C at charge, open the air damper to 3.5. After 1 minute, adjust the heat to 160°C, keeping the air damper unchanged. Make another heat adjustment at 148°C, reducing to 130°C. Roast until 5'03" when the temperature reaches 151°C, the bean surface turns yellow, the grassy smell completely disappears, and dehydration is complete. Adjust heat to 105°C and open the air damper to 4.

At the 8-minute mark, ugly wrinkles and black spots appear on the bean surface, and the toast aroma clearly transforms into coffee aroma, which can be defined as the prelude to first crack. At this point, listen carefully for the sound of first crack. At 9'07", first crack begins, reduce heat to 70°C, open the air damper fully (be very careful when adjusting heat - don't reduce it so much that the cracking stops), and drop at 194°C.

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