Ethiopia Sidamo - Full Red Cherry Natural - Santawani Coffee Beans

FrontStreet Coffee: Ethiopia Sidamo Santa Vene 74158 Coffee Beans

Country: Ethiopia

Grade: G1

Region: Sidamo

Processing Station: DWD Santa Vene Processing Station

Altitude: 2050 meters

Processing Method: Full red cherry natural process

Variety: 74158

Flavor Notes: Pineapple, Mango, Blueberry, Sweet Orange

DWD Company wears two hats: it is both a coffee processor and an import-exporter. Out of the 100,000 tons of coffee Ethiopia exports each year, 5,000 tons are premium green beans hand-picked by DWD. The company runs more processing plants across the Sidamo and Yirgacheffe regions than anyone else—as many as 17 facilities—and today's featured bean comes from one of them: the Santa Vene Processing Plant.

Santa Vene sits in the town of the same name within Sidamo. Established in 2004 at the foot of Bensa Mountain, it covers roughly 260 acres at an altitude of about 2050 meters.

Among DWD's plants, only the Gause Processing Station sits higher. Santa Vene is also one of DWD's most advanced facilities in the region, and it enforces a strict rule: every batch must be composed entirely of red cherries. (Full red cherry means only mature, hand-picked red fruits are accepted, so unripe fruit can never drag down the cup.) The resulting bean quality speaks for itself.

All red cherries are harvested in the middle to late stages of the production season—roughly from early December to early January—guaranteeing that every fruit comes from the highest-altitude plots. High-altitude coffee grows slowly, with more time to draw nutrients from the soil, so each cherry develops rich fruit flavor and high sweetness. After harvest, the cherries are laid on raised beds to dry, turned regularly for even moisture loss, and covered with shade whenever temperatures climb too high to prevent over-drying.

Notably, FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Sidamo Santa Vene uses the 74158 variety, still relatively rare on the market. Its story begins in 1970, when Ethiopia suffered a devastating coffee anthracnose (CBD) outbreak. Infected berries—both ripe and green—develop water-soaked spots on the surface, then sunken lesions that darken from red/green to dark brown and grayish-black, until the fruit necrotizes on the branch or drops entirely. The disease cut coffee tree productivity by 20%-30%, and in severe cases by as much as 70%-80%. The Harar and Yirgacheffe regions on the eastern half of the Great Rift Valley were devastated, while coffee on the western half escaped largely unscathed.

Blanket spraying of pesticides was never a long-term answer, so the Jimma Agricultural Research Center (JARC) on the western side organized "bean hunting teams" to comb the western Rift Valley for varieties with naturally superior disease resistance. Seeds were collected from more than 600 coffee trees, and experts used scientific identification and field trials to single out resistant candidates. From those seeds, new anthracnose-resistant varieties were successfully developed—74158 among them. The "74" marks the year of discovery; "158" is the experimental sample number.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brewing Recommendations for Santa Vene

Dripper: V60

Water Temperature: 92°C

Coffee Dose: 15g

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Grind Size: Fine-granulated-sugar texture (#20 sieve, sifting until 80% passes)

Fold the filter paper so it fits the dripper snugly, wet it with a small amount of water to seat it properly, and discard the water from the server. Add the grounds and tap gently to level the bed. For the first pour, gently inject 30 grams of water and bloom for 30 seconds. For the second pour, add water to about 135 grams, circling evenly and steadily from the center outward. Wait for the liquid to drain until the level reaches halfway, then make the final pour up to 225 grams. Once all the coffee has dripped through, the total extraction time typically lands around 2 minutes.

Dry Aroma:

Ground, the coffee releases rich aromas of orange peel, ripe peach flesh, and apricot.

Brewing Flavor:

Hot: The first sip floods the palate with tropical fruit—pineapple and sweet orange lead the way, followed closely by blueberry sweetness, as if a mouthful of juice has just burst open.

Medium to Low Temperature: As the cup cools, a remarkably vivid maple-like sweetness takes center stage.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Few Ethiopian regions offer traceable, single-village coffee the way today's specialty market demands—but the cooperative structure makes it possible. Ethiopian coffee is mostly garden-grown: each smallholder delivers harvested cherries to a village-level processing station and sells under the collective's name, which is why so many cooperative lots appear on the market, such as FrontStreet Coffee's Worka and Konga cooperatives. The Worka-based Guji cooperative, founded as an independent cooperative in 2012 with about 300 member farmers, produces one of the brightest washed Ethiopian cups we carry—free of traditional bitterness, with luminous citrus and lemon acidity and jasmine fragrance, thanks to mucilage removal before drying.

If it is the full red cherry natural character of Santa Vene that excites you, the FrontStreet Coffee natural Red Cherry follows the same philosophy: only fully ripe, defect-free cherries are picked, screened at the station, and sun-dried on raised beds, turned every 2-3 hours during the first days to prevent uneven heating and over-fermentation. After three to five weeks of drying, the pulp is scraped away by machine and the beans go to warehouse. Because the fruit dries in contact with the bean, the cup keeps its classic Yirgacheffe backbone while gaining tropical fruit—citrus acidity, berry juiciness, honeyed sweetness, and creamy smoothness.

Brewing either bean: V60 dripper, 90-91°C water, 15g dose at 1:15, ground to fine-granulated-sugar texture (80% pass on a #20 sieve). Pour 30g for a 30-second bloom, then 95g (scale reading about 125g) within a minute; when the level falls to two-thirds of the bed, finish with the remaining 100g (scale reading about 225g) around 1 minute 35 seconds. Drainage completes at 2:00-2:10—lift the dripper and enjoy.