What Grade is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe? Introduction to the Characteristics of Yirgacheffe Specialty Coffee Beans

FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe boasts highly distinctive coffee flavors, with fresh floral notes and citrus acidity that make people remember this coffee bean's name at first sip. Compared to the expensive FrontStreet Coffee Geisha, FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe is affordable yet delicious, often making it the top choice for daily coffee beans among coffee enthusiasts.

High Altitude Brings Exceptional Aroma to FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe

Yirgacheffe coffee originates from Yirgacheffe town, one of Ethiopia's highest altitude coffee-growing regions. Coffee trees are mostly planted on highlands approaching two thousand meters, with the highest points reaching around 2,100 meters. As altitude increases, the growing environment for coffee trees becomes more ideal, and the flavor advantages of Arabica coffee beans become more prominent. Lake Turkana, Lake Abaya, and Lake Chamo within the region bring abundant water vapor, creating year-round mist, spring-like seasons, gentle breezes, cool and humid conditions that nurture FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe's unique floral and fruity aromas.

Unlike many specialty coffee beans that are processed on a large scale in estate models, Ethiopian coffee is mostly grown by small individual farmers, typically on plots ranging around 1 hectare with limited yields. Therefore, they send their coffee to town or nearby cooperatives for unified processing. The management of cooperatives not only improves coffee quality but also provides farmers with more stable income. When we purchase coffee beans, we often find they have undergone post-processing, grading, roasting, and are finally named after the cooperatives, such as Gotiti, Worka, Konga, and Adado.

Adado Cooperative

Adado Cooperative is located in the Gedeo region, named after the Adado tribe of this area, and administratively belongs to the Sidamo province, where Yirgacheffe and Kochere are also situated. The Adado processing station is a cooperative formed by 7,000 coffee farmers, established in 2012, covering over 200 mu, making it the largest processing station in the area, about a 30-minute drive from the center of Yirgacheffe town. The processing station is well-equipped, handling both washed and natural processing methods, with sufficient raised drying beds.

What Makes FrontStreet Coffee's Natural Yirgacheffe Different?

Ethiopia's high altitude, low rainfall, and long sunshine hours make it ideal for natural drying of green coffee beans. The so-called "natural process" involves directly drying ripe coffee cherries after harvest.

During the drying process, the sugars and aromas from the fruit pulp are well preserved and penetrate into the green coffee beans. Meanwhile, the longer the natural processing time, the more thorough the fermentation. Because the natural method allows coffee cherries to dry naturally, the coffee beans mature naturally inside the fruit without interference from external environments. Therefore, naturally processed coffee beans amplify their inherent flavors, exhibiting more prominent tropical fruit acidity and berry-like flavor notes than washed coffees, with fuller fermentation aromas and sweetness, and a richer aftertaste. FrontStreet Coffee's Adado and Red Cherry on their bean list are both natural-processed Yirgacheffe coffees.

For roasting, FrontStreet Coffee considers that FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe should present acidity as the main flavor direction, so both of FrontStreet Coffee's natural Yirgacheffe coffees use medium-light roasting. Through cupping, FrontStreet Coffee compared the flavors and mouthfeel exhibited by both coffee beans.

FrontStreet Coffee's natural Yirgacheffe Red Cherry coffee's dry aroma shows full berry sweetness and acidity. When slurped at different temperatures, it reveals soft berry sweet and sour notes, mature fruit fermentation sensations, obvious honey sweetness, and black tea finish, with a smooth mouthfeel.

FrontStreet Coffee's natural Yirgacheffe Adado's dry aroma has distinct red petals, citrus, and cream aromatics. On the palate, one experiences berries, tropical fruits, orange, cocoa, and black tea. The overall profile is well-rounded, with a clean mouthfeel and moderate body, featuring a noticeable aftertaste.

FrontStreet Coffee's Natural Yirgacheffe Pour-over Recommendations:

Medium-light roasting allows coffee beans to retain more floral and fruity aromas. Compared to medium-dark roasts, high-altitude light-roasted coffee beans have a tighter internal structure, requiring higher water temperature and finer grinding to better extract the coffee's flavor compounds. Here, FrontStreet Coffee uses hot water at 92-93°C for extraction. For grind size, FrontStreet Coffee uses a #20 standard sieve with 80% pass-through rate.

Filter: V60
Water Temperature: 92-93°C
Dose: 15g
Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: Fine sugar size EK43s - setting 10 (80% through #20 sieve)

First pour 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, then pour 95g more (scale shows around 125g), completing the pour in about 1 minute. When the water level drops to 2/3 of the coffee bed, pour the remaining 100g (scale shows around 225g), completing in about 1 minute 35 seconds. At 2'10" the drip filtration is complete, remove the filter cone, and finish extraction.

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Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473