Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Abera Gole

I've been excited about this coffee for so long I could barely contain myself. Some of our favorite coffee is natural processed Ethiopia Halo Bariti. And this is a microlot from within the Halo Bariti co-op. It's a spectacular find.

Abera Gole is one farmer among the 255 farmers in wild, remote Halo Bariti. He sorted his crop to a grade 1 status and kept it separated from the rest of the coffee. He is 50 years old and has a 10 acre coffee farm and coffee is his primary source of income. You can read a short biography of him here: https://royalcoffee.com/product/47136

His crop has the same sweetness and complexity as the bigger Halo Bariti lot, but just is elevated. Instead of blueberry and pomegranate, we are finding more of apricot, lemon, perfume, floral, starfruit, tangerine notes. Very clean, very sweet, enjoyable acidity. Beans look really nice and uniform, they roast well, it's all you could ask for from a sundried Ethiopia.

It is being marketed and officially labeled as a Yirgacheffe, but in truth, it is grown too far south to be Yirgacheffe and is technically part of the Gedeb region in the Gedeo zone. Halo Bariti is a new fair trade organic co-op that has only been in existence since 2012. The members of the co-op own their own land and can boast that they have the highest altitude to work with in the entire country of Ethiopia (4800 to 6800 feet above sea level). It's an area where wild, heirloom coffee grows naturally, and even though this co-op is cultivating the coffee plants for commercial sale, they still grow heirloom varietals native to their land, some of which aren't grown anywhere else in the world.

This is a natural (dry) process coffee and so we are roasting it lightly -- barely even out of the 1st cracks. We can get away with that because the coffee is less acidic and has a thicker body than you would expect in a natural Ethiopian. It doesn't seem to matter if you roast it slow or too fast or if you air roast it or drum roast it. It doesn't matter if you get it a few degrees too dark. It's just good coffee. Compared to most natural processed coffees, it's fairly easy to roast and easy to brew. You're going to like this one.

US Arrival September 2021