The Impact of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange on the Coffee Market & Flavor Profile of Buku Coffee Beans

In Ethiopia, coffee is the country's primary source of foreign exchange. It is the main export commodity that earns valuable foreign currency for the nation. However, coffee also has a vibrant domestic market.

Coffee prices show significant interannual variations between different seasons. These changes are the combined impact of cyclical trends reflecting factors in domestic supply and global coffee demand and supply conditions. Additionally, differences can be seen between different varieties and grades of coffee. Some varieties like Yirgacheffe and Sidamo command considerable premiums in the international market.

With such large coffee production, how can the market be well managed and understood? As a country that has long enjoyed coffee reputation and international status, Ethiopia's coffee industry is supported by the ECX (Ethiopian Commodity Exchange). ECX was established by the Ethiopian government in 2008 to democratize market trading rights for farmers growing commodities such as beans, corn, coffee, and wheat.

After 2008, crops produced in Ethiopia including wheat, corn, sesame, and coffee were fully integrated into the ECX trading system (Ethiopian Commodity Exchange) to replace existing auction and export methods. The approach involves coffee farmers or cooperatives delivering coffee to ECX centralized warehouses, where beans of the same grade and from the same producing region are mixed together and then directly auctioned. You won't know which specific farms or cooperatives or which producing regions produced them. This practice actually has no impact on production and quality, making it easier to distinguish coffee quality by price [you get what you pay for]. What's affected is that intermediate traders cannot freely track and obtain satisfactory profits [low price, high quality], making it clearer for consumers. Because trading outside the ECX system will be heavily taxed, currently about 90% or more is processed through this trading system. However, for buyers who love specialty coffee, the ECX trading system is not a good thing. For this reason, starting from 2010, Ethiopia launched the DST (Direct Specialty Trade) system. The DST system holds irregular Ethiopian auctions where only specialty coffees that exceed 80 points according to SCAA cupping standards can be traded with foreign green bean buyers under their own farm or cooperative names.

Below is an ECX contract for everyone to see. In this table, we can clearly understand the coffee's bean variety, origin, processing method, green bean grade, and other information. Transparent trading makes it convenient for everyone to understand coffee trading situations.

Introduction to Ethiopian Flower Queen Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee would like to introduce Ethiopia's Flower Queen coffee here. Let us briefly explain this to everyone.

The Sidama producing region is located in southern Ethiopia.

The coffee growing areas are situated around the East African Rift Valley, and Sidamo's coffee flavors are extremely diverse.

Different soil compositions, regional microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties create significant differences and characteristics in coffee produced by each town and region.

The sun-dried coffee beans produced by "Buku Abel" in the Hambella region won the sun-dried category championship in Ethiopian producing regions in 2017, and that year this bean was named Flower Queen. Hambella is located in Ethiopia's coffee-producing region of GUJI. Currently, there are nearly 20 processing plants in the Hambella region. Among all estates and processing plants, those from the Goro mountain spring processing plant, at an altitude of 2280 meters, only undergo sun-drying when red fruit sugar content reaches above 21.

Differences Between Small Bean Flower Queen and Flower Queen X.0

Among all these estates and processing stations, strictly speaking, only sun-dried coffee beans from the "Buku Abel" processing plant can be called "Flower Queen coffee beans." This is why Flower Queen 2.0, Flower Queen 3.0, and Flower Queen 3.1 appeared respectively in 2018 and 2019, named 4.0 in 2020, and Flower Queen was named 5.0 in 2021. Simply put, the area expanded, and then the reputation of Flower Queen from that year was used - that's Flower Queen X.0.

Differences Between 2017 Flower Queen Coffee Beans and Those from Later Harvest Seasons

Since the original Flower Queen was included in Flower Queen 2.0 and Flower Queen 3.0, can the original Flower Queen still be found? In 2018 and 2019, the processing plant still had beans from small producing areas, and FrontStreet Coffee, among these two-year batches, discovered that the flavor was very close to the original Flower Queen. The aftertaste wasn't as good as the original 2017 Flower Queen, but surprisingly, we could sometimes still identify small bean Flower Queen batches from these two batches of green beans - identical to the original small bean green beans. Among the 2017 Flower Queen coffee beans, there were some particularly small bean varieties, which are the main source of Flower Queen's aroma. Therefore, Flower Queen containing old Flower Queen small bean varieties will also be called Small Bean Flower Queen. Starting from 2020, the processing plant independently processed Small Bean Flower Queen again, selling it simultaneously with Flower Queen X.0 from the same year.

FrontStreet Coffee's Flower Queen, using medium-light roast, presents overall flavors of lemon, jasmine, and berry aromas.

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