Our first Ethiopian coffee of the year is coming from the Oromia region. At the Hambela Bedessa washing station they begin to collect cherries from the surrounding farmers in early November. The pulping was done on a traditional disc pulper which removes the skin and the pulp before they are graded in 1st and 2nd quality. A 72 hour wet fermentation will release all the mucilage from the beans and is removed during the washing in the channels. At the same time they are once again graded by density. The lower density (lower grade) will float and be removed leaving only the dense and high quality beans. These are soaked in clean water for 2 hours.

To dry the beans they are piled up in layers of 2cm in height for a period of 10 days, followed by a hand sorting. After the harvest season the coffees are moved to warehouses and dry-mills in Addis. The coffee trucks must pass a local ECX checkpoint where they are graded and registered as an exportable product before it continues to Addis Ababa.