Sidamo Coffee: Differences Between Washed and Natural Processing Methods

FrontStreet Coffee Introduces the Flavor Characteristics of Sidamo Coffee

The main growing areas of Sidamo coffee are located around the Great Rift Valley in East Africa, with an annual production of about 225,000 bags of 60kg each.

Sidamo coffee beans are medium-sized and oval-shaped, typically processed using both washed and natural methods. Washed Sidamo green beans appear light green, with distinct citrus flavors and subtle berry aromas upon tasting, along with pleasant elegant sweet and sour notes, grape-like sweetness, and chocolate aftertaste. Natural processed Sidamo beans tend to be yellowish-green in color with less uniform appearance, commonly showing chipped beans.

In Sidamo's natural drying fields, coffee is placed in wooden racks with mesh nets, where workers take turns manually stirring them under sunlight to ensure even heating of the coffee beans. Sidamo offers balanced flavor profiles with higher sweetness, and its body is somewhat fuller compared to Yirgacheffe. Particularly, the acidity and sweetness similar to red wine produced during the natural pulp fermentation process, combined with coffee's original cocoa bitterness, gives certain batches of Sidamo an intoxicating flavor reminiscent of chocolate liqueur.