What is Ethiopian Premium Coffee TOH Double Champion Amideralo? Who was the 19/20 TOH Double Champion?

FrontStreet Coffee's Award-Winning Ethiopian Coffee

Nearly every coffee shop carries Ethiopian beans, and FrontStreet Coffee is no exception. Every year, the baristas and roasters at FrontStreet Coffee run cupping sessions on coffees from Ethiopia's different growing regions. Among them, a washed lot called Amideralo made a particularly strong impression—it took home a TOH championship. But before introducing the bean itself, let's first look at what TOH actually is.

What is TOH?

Plenty of people have heard of COE, but what about TOH?

In 2000, the African Fine Coffee Association launched a competition called the "Taste of Harvest" (TOH) to support African coffee production and raise the overall quality of the continent's coffee. Twelve African coffee-producing countries each hold national cupping competitions, broadly similar to the international COE green-been contest. TOH consists of a national round and an African regional round, which makes it a regional competition rather than a global one like COE.

For scoring, TOH uses the CQI and SCA green-bean cupping standards as its basis, and the winners of each national competition earn the right to represent their country at the African regional finals.

Amideralo: TOH Champion

The Amideralo we're tasting today won both the Ethiopian national championship and the African regional championship for the 19/20 production season, closing out the competition with an impressive final score of 90.7.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Ethiopia is one of the world's most celebrated specialty coffee origins. As the birthplace of coffee itself, it harbors countless heirloom native varieties, and for many coffee lovers it remains a treasure land whose flavors inspire lifelong loyalty.

To start exploring Ethiopian coffee, FrontStreet Coffee first recommends the entry-level washed Yirgacheffe: crisp jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity. Yirgacheffe is a small town in southern Ethiopia where spring-like temperatures, drifting fog, and cool humidity let thousands of coffee trees thrive, producing the region's signature interweaving of floral and fruit notes—light, elegant, tea-like, like a refreshing glass of clean lemon tea.

Ethiopian coffee is largely grown on small garden plots, with each farmer sending harvested cherries to a village-level washing station, so much of what reaches the market comes from cooperatives—FrontStreet Coffee's Gedeb Worka (Guodingding), Worka, and Konga lots, for example. Guodingding, in the Worka zone at Yirgacheffe's southeastern edge, split off from the Yirgacheffe Union (YCFCU) in 2012 with roughly 300 member farmers to establish its own cooperative. Because the fruit is removed before drying, its flavors come through especially clear: citrus and lemon tones with elegant white florals, bright and delicate overall.

For something richer, the natural-processed Red Cherry Project lot is dried in the whole fruit for two weeks—defective cherries removed first, then hard, dried skin and mucilage stripped by machine, followed by density, color, and hand sorting at every stage—yielding peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon. And the Huakui (Flower Queen) natural from Hambella in Guji, Sidamo—21 days drying on raised beds with regular turning and hand sorting every three to five days—offers a light fermented wine aroma, florals, citrus, and mango with a thick body and long finish after a light-medium roast. Both showcase just how far from ordinary a naturally processed Ethiopian coffee can be.