Ethiopia Sidamo Coffee Bean Flavor Profile - Introduction to Sidamo Honey Process Coffee

Ethiopia Sidamo Coffee: An Introduction to Honey-Processed Beans

What Is the Red Cherry Project?

The Red Cherry Project, or ORC, is a quality program built around small farms. In 2007, Trabocca, the largest green bean importer in the Netherlands, launched it in pursuit of the finest Ethiopian beans.

The requirements go beyond simply picking fully red cherries; the project also insists on entirely manual harvesting. Even so, those are only the basics, because the project is far more involved than it appears. Its real aim is to encourage farmers and surprise roasters. Before each harvest, Trabocca invites Ethiopian farms to produce small lots of roughly 1,500 to 3,000 kilograms, or 25 to 50 bags. Only women select the cherries, and they must be 100% fully ripe, which makes an outsized difference in the cup. That is why meticulous, sharp-eyed, hardworking Ethiopian women are the true engine of the Red Cherry Project.

The project is also a way of strengthening farms by rewarding extra care in selection, and these coffees command correspondingly higher prices. The Red Cherry Project spans washed, natural, semi-washed, semi-natural, and experimental coffees, with main producing regions including Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, Bench Maji (Bonga Forest), Lekempti, Kembata, Guji, Harar, and Limu, to which the Golocha area near Harar was added in 2011. All of these coffees show the distinctive flavors that fully express Ethiopian coffee. After receiving the coffee, Trabocca selects further, and farms that pass cupping at both the Ethiopian and Dutch offices earn substantial bonuses. Trabocca reinvests all the profits it earns back into its partner farms.

Processing Method

This bean is processed using the red honey method.

Honey processing means drying coffee beans in the sun while retaining the mucilage. Once the outer pulp is removed, a sticky, gelatinous layer remains. Traditional washed processing rinses it away with water, but water is limited in some high-altitude areas, so this direct sun-drying method developed instead.

That pectin-rich mucilage holds the most sugar in the whole coffee fruit and is a key part of fermentation during processing. You could say it supplies 80% of the nutrients involved in processing. Yellow honey leaves 60% of the pectin on the bean, red honey leaves 75%, and black honey leaves almost all of it.

Flavor Profile

On the nose there is a ginger flower aroma. On entry come citrus, lemon, and fruit candy. The middle shows cedar wood and honey sweetness, while the finish carries oolong tea with a persistent creamy aftertaste.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the Red Cherry Project's fully ripe, naturally processed approach appeals to you, FrontStreet's Sun-dried Red Cherry coffee is the direct expression of it. Made only from fully ripe, sound cherries that are dried on raised beds and turned every two to three hours early on to avoid uneven fermentation, it keeps the typical Yirgacheffe character while adding tropical fruit from the sun-dried process, showing citrus-like acidity, a juicy berry quality, honeyed sweetness, and a creamy smoothness.

To compare against the honey-processed style, try FrontStreet's washed Yirgacheffe daily bean, the classic introduction to Ethiopia with white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity, and a tea-like body, or FrontStreet's Gedeb Cooperative coffee, whose traditional washed processing delivers citrus and lemon tones and an elegant white floral profile that is bright and refined.