Yirgacheffe Coffee Yirgacheffe Coffee Taste Profile Yirgacheffe Flavor Characteristics Introduction

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FrontStreet Coffee - Yirgacheffe Coffee Introduction

The name Yirgacheffe seems to have swept through the coffee world overnight and stayed popular ever since, bringing with it a sweet-sour fruit taste and a jasmine aroma.

It has noble blood, tracing back to the birthplace of coffee — Ethiopia.

It is singular, overturning the old assumption that coffee must taste bitter and burnt.

It is like a refined lady, with the sweet-sour thrill of a first love that captures coffee lovers' hearts.

How can anyone drink coffee — especially specialty coffee — without knowing this elegant lady?

Yirgacheffe began as a small town in Ethiopia, in the West Arsi administrative region. Once, only beans from Yirgacheffe town could be called Yirgacheffe.

The earliest beans from the town were known for their lemon acidity and fresh jasmine fragrance. Unlike most beans across West Arsi, which show citrus acidity and a more reserved egg-flower aroma, Yirgacheffe stood out and became famous.

Today, after administrative reorganization, Yirgacheffe town belongs to the Gedeo administrative region. Beans sold as Yirgacheffe in fact come from the whole of Gedeo, an area far larger than the original town. With the absorption of the former four major sub-regions of West Arsi — Yirgacheffe town, Kochere, Wenago and Genena Anbeya — the flavor profile of Yirgacheffe has been greatly enriched.

Hundreds of smallholder farmers compete with one another. There are cooperatives such as Adado, Gotiti, Worka and Konga under the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU), and there are smallholders from towns like Jejepu, Mengesha, Belisha and Alim that outsiders may never have heard of. One mountain, one village, each with its own representative beans — some with juicy tropical fruit, some with firm berry acidity, some even with almond and other nutty notes.

Today's Yirgacheffe is more like a synonym for a large group of high-quality Ethiopian specialty coffees, every one with its own particular character.

About FrontStreet Coffee

In short, FrontStreet Coffee is a research-oriented coffee house that enjoys sharing coffee knowledge. It shares without reservation simply to help more people fall in love with coffee. Every month it holds three discounted coffee events, because FrontStreet Coffee wants more drinkers to enjoy the best coffee at the lowest price. That has been the mission for the past six years.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Yirgacheffe is the coffee that introduces most drinkers to Ethiopian specialty coffee, and FrontStreet Coffee's entry point is the water-washed Yirgacheffe Daily Bean — known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity and a tea-like body, at a price that makes it an easy first bag. It comes from a region that sits at roughly 1700-2100 meters, with the trees planted above 1800 meters, making it one of the highest coffee-growing areas in the world.

To taste the flavor at its most precise, try the Guting Guting Cooperative. It sits in the Worka region at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe and was originally part of the Worka cooperative under YCFCU before being identified as a single-origin lot; its traditional washed processing yields clean, bright citrus and lemon acidity with jasmine florals and no bitterness. For the other side of Yirgacheffe, the sun-dried Red Cherry, made from fully ripe cherries dried whole on raised beds, adds tropical fruit to the classic profile, with citrus acidity, berry juice, honey sweetness and a creamy mouthfeel. FrontStreet suggests brewing these at 90-91°C with 15g of coffee at a 1:15 ratio and a 80% pass-through grind on a #20 sieve.